As a writer, what's really interesting about this post and the comments/ feedback it has gotten in the last few days is how much it resonates with engineers regardless of their discipline - from aerospace to software.
Particularly points 2 and 7 about not BSing engineers and giving them autonomy/ agency to create and self-direct. That last point, especially, is something employers would be well-served to pay attention to.
Thanks to OP bhaumik for posting the article to HN.
This - "Twitter... It reflects the true asymmetry of human relationships."
What I loved about Twitter is that it gave me the onus of choice to include or ignore people that may have attended school with me, may have worked with me at one point, etc... but for one reason or another I no longer wanted involved in my personal lives. (Yes, I know Facebook has privacy walls but we all know how permeable they haven proven to be, nevermind their disconcerting rewording of the Terms of Service).
Twitter is also more inclusive and consistent with the 'whole character' of a person. On Facebook it is easy to be typecast or become monofocused among one group.. family, college classmates, frat buddies, whatever.
On Twitter I can lament my horrible Redskins every Sunday and talk affiliate marketing, code, or fishing in Alaska without breaking a stride.
Not to mention, I think the barrier to communicating with people we identify as 'out of reach' is much lower on Twitter than any other medium. Name an author and with effort you can probably exchange with them on Twitter.
Getting them to friend you back on Facebook? Probably not.
As a web publisher and affiliate marketer, I've had domains DDoSed at least 4 times in FY10. The worst of it being twice in two days on two separate domains both targeting the same campaign by the same botnet based in Turkey.
Each one cost me money, but the two in two days cost me thousands. I was hosting a VPS on Rackspace and did everything I could to mitigate it but ultimately the attack stopped because they wanted those resources directed elsewhere.
After the first one, I hooked up with a smart guy on Twitter (http://twitter.com/sempersecurus) that tracks botnets. He allowed me to sinkhole the domain so that he could collect and aggregate the data.
To stay defensive, I put some .htaccess blocks in for countries that are clearly well outside normal buyer patterns. In each case, I know a user (read: a human) saw the campaign and then put the DDoS in place so I hoped, by the .htaccess blocks, to prevent them from seeing the site altogether. But I know I really need to be a much more knowledgable coder to be proficient at deflecting these in the future.
Groupon could have taken a lesson from my grandma:
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
$6BB today invested in AAA bonds for ten years will be more than their corporate valuation after their deal hawk coupon site's novelty wears off. Eventually Facebook, Twitter or Google will create better 'hyperlocal' business models and monetize the long tail of local search with their massive reach.
As soon as I saw this title I was going to post the Snopes rebuttal, but you beat me to it.
A non-tech family member will send this in an email chain at least once every six months along with some variant on this message: "OMG THE SKY IS FALLING, OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS POOP!?!!" (All caps used for quote truth/ accuracy).
Via anecdotal comments from business owners I've spoken with here in Philadelphia, most Groupon participants reported no long term increase in sales.
The beauty of Groupon was it's timing, gaining massive ground during the worst recession the country has seen. Business owners would do anything short of giving products or services away for free to get people in their stores.
Their Groupon exposure certainly filled their store for that day, but often at the expense of the business owner (at least two SMB I talked to reported the event cost them more than it brought in) and didn't result in a long term increase as hoped.
The longevity of their profits therefor, if this is more than anecdotal, is indeed in question.
That's a great observation. From my own experience I would agree- smart & young sometimes requires thrift; smart & thrifty can be ageless; thrifty and young sometimes requires making smart choices.
And, eventually, the product of smart choices and thrift by someone young can make them rich.
That said, no- I don't know a single early adopter who is independently wealthy (which fits my definition of 'rich').
Wouldn't publicly available information (e.g. the kind you would have found in a phone book 20 years ago) be allowable under the laws of Fair Use?
The only reason I can see a directory being disadvantageous is because it undermines all the money-spent-on-education/ years-spent-ass-kissing to get into "the network" of good-old Washingtonites and the referrals they bring.
I work as an IP paralegal by day (when not fiendishly working on my own coding projects at night).
My one recommendation is that if you are cost conscious, send your IP projects (copyright, patent, trademark) to a boutique or, as we call them, a 'mill'. Having worked in both boutique and large conglomerate firm settings, I can attest to the fact boutiques are far more organized and, because their overhead is so much less, far less expensive.
W/r/t at what point in your development cycle you should register the TM, I have seen the spectrum of very early to very late filings. While in one instance a late-stage filing resulted in more similar marks out there (and the class claims for goods/ services had to be much more limited) I have not yet seen it be detrimental to getting registered eventually.
On the other hand, small start-ups (both net based and brick-and-mortar) account for a disproporionate number of the applications we have to let go abandoned due to client request or nonpayment.
As a writer, what's really interesting about this post and the comments/ feedback it has gotten in the last few days is how much it resonates with engineers regardless of their discipline - from aerospace to software.
Particularly points 2 and 7 about not BSing engineers and giving them autonomy/ agency to create and self-direct. That last point, especially, is something employers would be well-served to pay attention to.
Thanks to OP bhaumik for posting the article to HN.