This will likely continue to be a solid strategy. As new technologies and innovations come to light new generic groups are created. Maybe one technique would be to keep track of emerging internet meme's and jump on related domains ASAP?
I have first hand experience of this at my last company (as an employee). Several big name companies were sniffing around and the CEO took the initiative to actually explain in detail what we were doing and how we did it.
Not one of the companies actually became a competitor even though they had the financial resources to crush us. In fact, one ended up purchasing us!
True however then users have to think followed by get frustrated dreaming up a name. They already know their email address. And unless they already signed up its probably not taken.
>wrote his own programming language when he was 16...
Do you mean he executed "man yacc"? ;)
Thats quite a stream of serendipitous events (referring the the above blog). How does one just have "intense sessions" with people like Max Levchin, Evan Williams and Naval Ravikant??
Are the images coming from flickr? Because I am getting pictures of a baseball and the word is "playing". Since the images are crowdsourced then maybe there should be an array of them to convey the idea.
In my opinion there are too many words off the bat to remember if you are new to the language. How about doing a delay of one where you define a Spanish word and its image(s) and then the question after next is the image to assign the Spanish or English word to it, then a few questions later its the Spanish word to assign the English word to it? That way you get a 1-2 punch to help memorize it.
I don't know the cost... but I do know that parsing xml and outputting excel is not all that sophisticated. However you'll need a more concrete application of the process to get some bytes built. Hit craigslist software developers up for some quotes to get a better idea of what you need to move forward (dont hire anyone yet!). And start reading: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/11/09/rexml-processing-xml-in-...
A developer can really get screwed jumping into someone else's idea on faith. If you really believe in your idea then pay to outsource a prototype, then (since you are not a developer) show you have the business chops to bring it all together. Once you do, developers for your idea will be a dime a dozen.
I've got some ideas around the eInk type displays. Every now and then I send an email to the eInk guys trying to get some bulk rate pricing on their displays - 3 months now and no response. I've got no idea if my ideas for the displays are marketable as I don't know the display costs. These types of problems usher me toward software time and time again...
Just be thankful you have a girlfriend who's a) supportive of your startup mistress, b) can relate to your night-long bug hunts, and c) you can sleep with.