Each individual mainstream user might have a finite number of needs, but the number of needs of users in aggregate is effectively infinite. I agree that I'd rather use 5-10 great apps than 40-50 marginally useful apps, but why do you think the 5-10 apps you find most useful would be the same 5-10 apps someone else does? No one webapp has to appeal to the entire market to be successful, it just has to appeal to enough users to provide an income to cover its costs.
This reminds me of Joel Spolsky's take on the 80/20 bloatware myth. The idea being that bloated programs like Word are bad because 80% of the users only use 20% of the features. But they don't all use the same 20% is the problem, so you can't just remove 80% of the features without pissing off a sizable group of people. I think the same applies to web apps. Nobody needs every one of them, but the right set of web apps for any given person probably isn't identical to anyone else's.
The biggest problem with Microsoft software is imo not the price, but the complicated licensing structure of their software. When reading pages on microsoft.com about licensing you will get a headache if you're not an accountant. With Linux you can simply deploy another server if you need one, without thinking about all those licensing programs and restrictions.
A related question that i have is: would a startup be less attractive for potential buyers like Google and Yahoo if it uses Microsoft technologies?
That's where market-making comes in. People didn't know they needed to search the web until they found out it was easy. They didn't know they needed a computer they saw games, spreadsheets, etc. They didn't know they needed a dishwasher until they saw this amazing machine that washed your dishes. People (the market) might not think up the things they want, but they sure know if they want something when they use it.
It seems like most internships are not so much a "free trial" for the internee, but an extended, interactive interview and test of skills, personality, and attitude. They exist so that firms don't get stuck with inept workers.
There are also significant costs associated with interns (e.g. training, relocation) which are depreciated if the intern gets hired. Having an intern program like he describes would definitely see an increase in those costs, which makes it a disincentive for firms to have such a program.
That said, I'd love to have the opportunity to intern anywhere at any stage in my life.
I think it was supposed to cluster users who often voted the same way, and then infer that if a user voted up an article, most people in the same cluster as that user would also like the article.
This approach is too simplistic to be useful in a multi-user environment.
Adds, changes, and deletes MUST be done immediately and cannot be queued without bottlenecking the entire system.
Undo's MUST be examined for every possible ramification. What if you change something and then want to undo it AFTER someone else has changed it again? What if you want to undo an add after someone else has already changed it? What about undoing a delete after someone else has added it anew?
Also, distinction must be made on how to handle a client side undo (simple) versus a server side undo (could be complex).
I agree with the writer that undo is a necessity, not a luxury, in a serious web app. For industrial strength apps, however, more thought is needed than what this writer has provided.
Having the source code wouldn't be much of an assurance. How do you know that this code is really the code that is deployed on the machine during the elections? How do you know that the memory cards that store the votes are not tampered with? How do you know that the machine's hardware works "as advertized"?
Without a paper trail, we should assume every voting mechanism is rigged. The stakes are just too high to do otherwise.
No. I can have needs I'm not going to pay for. Or I can have needs whose solutions are too expensive. Or many needs can come from people who have not too much money so not all needs are an interesting market.
sure, in generic terms. Our lawyer was instrumental in getting 3 - we splurged a bit and hired a very reputable firm in Palo Alto that is well-connected. We paid more than we would have liked for the legal work a year ago but it's paying dividends now in terms of introductions. The other intros came from just random networking. We live in AZ but I drove my truck up to SF and couch surfed the past month just going to events, shaking hands and meeting people. I had a list of people I know through various user group involvement and presence on listserv's so i contacted them and tried to have a different lunch lined up everyday. I used Meetup, Upcoming and googled "Bay Area User Groups" and tried to lineup a different event every night. I actively used Facebook and my blog to solicit intros and tell people what I was doing, switching my network to Silicon Valley temporarily and finding events via that. I met great contacts at the Startup Weekend that was held in SF. And the whole time I was writing a series of posts on my trip essentially live-blogging it to meet more contacts. You can read those here if you're interested-> http://www.scrollinondubs.com/tags/sfroadtrip
There is no "typical intro" to describe - they happened in the most unpredictable/serendipitous ways, but having the conversation-starter of "so I drove here from Phoenix and have been sleeping on friends couches so i can be in the mix for our startup" was a powerful lead-in to be able to talk with people and get them to listen.
I know PG is a big fan of the idea you should really be in the Bay Area to give your startup the best chance of success. We have our company in AZ right now and moving wasn't an option so this was the next best thing we figured we could do. Definitely very happy with the choice.
I don't think there is demand for another search engine that is 10% better than Google. Whatever comes along that can challenge Google, isn't going to be a "search engine" in a traditional sense of the word. Because Google mostly works and works pretty well. To displace Google from it's position in the search engine market, one needs to redefine the problem. Or be 10 times better than the leader.
I can think of many ways to make things 10% better, but that's just the next set of features these guys need to implement. I'm not convinced that is a business.
When Google started to work, it was definitely 10 times better than the competition, or had redefined it.
This approach is too simplistic to be useful in nearly any environment. On top of that, its basically the exact opposite of what undo is/has always been.
The "correct" way to do undo, is to perform an event, and keep a list of inverse events. As you pop those off the undo stack, you can simply execute them.
As you mentioned, this may be slightly more complicated in a multi-user environment -- but in this example, it would absolutely be the right way to go. Plus, this is so easy to get working in javascript, where you can actually push functions to the stack, and then execute them when you pop them off...
The prepaid card is a good idea. And I wonder whether it is always necessary to authorise individual payments. For something like newspaper articles, payments could be pooled and transferred en bloc via some kind clearing mechanism that doesn't require me to have an account with every magazine or website I read. The seller wouldn't even know who was paying and the clearing institution wouldn't know what exactly is being paid for.
The reason why nobody does it that way is probably that it's difficult to garantee settlement and the credit risk involved. But do we really need such a garantee in cases where no physical goods are delivered? Maybe it's enough if it works in 90 % of all cases. That's more than the rate of legally acquired software licenses today.
Alright, I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the 2000 and 2004 elections were rigged, but I didn't want to sound like a crackpot. It's too bad there is no political process left in America.
Viewing the web as a kitchen is quite limiting. There are thousands of products in your house...many are for entertainment (TV, DVDs, CDs, ipod, etc.), some are for news and education (TV, radio, magazines, newspaper), some are for communication (phone, mailbox), and on and on...Software and web applications can be involved in all of those things in one way or another.
I don't think I'm going out on a limb if I say that I think changes will come much more rapidly in the future than they have in the past. So, while the telephone has been around for over 100 years, I don't think Skype will last out the next seven years. Facebook will be lucky if it gets five years at the top (if it ever bests MySpace and makes it to the top). I don't think a better "social network" will dethrone Facebook...I think a whole other class of product will take its place (actually a dozen or more classes of products, probably, since people do so many different things with Facebook). Your job, as a technology innovator is to spot those trends and build the products that enable them.
And keep in mind that little web applications aren't the only problem worth solving. There's a lot of software that runs inside the firewall at businesses--and a lot of it is moving to web-based variants. There are many worlds to change, not just the world Facebook is addressing.
That said, there aren't many opportunities to make something as big and world-altering as Google. There's only so many problems on the web that touch every single human being that uses the web (that's a big customer-base). Search is actually the only one I can think of. Email, perhaps.
Also - the cost of servicing that marginal niche is now so low that it's economically feasible to build a solution just for them. To use the kitchen example, most people want gas & electric ranges, but a few might want eco-friendly solar-powered cookware. This product doesn't exist (to my knowledge), but it's because the cost of designing, tooling up, and manufacturing it is above what people are willing to pay. In software, a niche solution could probably be coded up by just a couple programmers. It'd have more economic value than the code they wouldn't produce at their day jobs, so it becomes economically feasible.
I think the Web may be less like the kitchen, and more like television. Shows come and go every year, so there will always be a need for new ones.
In an attention economy you're fighting for eyeballs. And there's a smaller group that's always looking for what's new and different. If you want to pursue this demographic, and the larger, lagging crowd behind them, then you have a chance at capturing attention.
I share many of your concerns, and personally use very few Web applications--basically maps and mail. I often ask the same question: what can I build?
Perhaps it's better to choose a pre-existing category/market and try to win through better execution. I also think success is more likely when building software as a product instead of a free service.
I just ordered an industrial-size vat of Crisco. See your future, be your future.
Traditionally it was "the fat kid" who played goal, since anybody who could skate would rather put the puck in the net than get whaled in the nords.
I believe this changed when modern netminders brought more skill, athleticism, and even dignity (really) to the position. Plus, people love all the cool-looking gear.
I love how close this is to what we (Ning) started with, down to the cloning terminology! Really interested to see where it goes. The other "JS Everywhere" folk-programming startup (name escapes me) went tits up recently :-( Not sure why.
In high school I wrote a simple web-based voting app for school elections (an election I was running in, no less)... had I wanted to rig the election, it would have been trivial to do so and cover my tracks. As downer articulated, there's absolutely no reason to believe that electronic voting results aren't being manipulated.
Seems like voting might be one of the few areas where more technology is not a good thing.
This reminds me of Joel Spolsky's take on the 80/20 bloatware myth. The idea being that bloated programs like Word are bad because 80% of the users only use 20% of the features. But they don't all use the same 20% is the problem, so you can't just remove 80% of the features without pissing off a sizable group of people. I think the same applies to web apps. Nobody needs every one of them, but the right set of web apps for any given person probably isn't identical to anyone else's.