http://video.yahoo.com/watch/111593/1710507 (Part 1)

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/111594/1710553 (Part 2)

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/111595/1710607 (Part 3)

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/111596/1710658 (Part 4)

There are also a series on DOM, advanced stuff etc

I still suffer nightmares from it.

Just the other day I really wanted to watch an online presentation, yet it insisted I installed realplayer. I was considering it, as I really wanted to watch this particular presentation, but unfortunately I just could not bring myself to going through that again.

Dilbert (the comic strip) isn't really about any particular character. It's about patterns of relationships in all hierarchical human organizations. No escape is possible for Dilbert (the character) because his tribulations are all the result of emergent phenomena. The comic has distilled those conflicts down to their essence, so they're visible anywhere. Call it the Dilbert Pattern.

They're run by execs who know they won't still be working there in 5 years and who get paid mainly in stock options. (That's how most public companies are run). The incentive of the people who run the company is just to maintain what little they can for as long as they can, and they're actually doing a pretty good job of it.

With the possible exception of suing actual customers, they've done a fantastic job of maintaining the status quo just long enough for them to cash out their options every year for some amount of profit.

You first try to implement your idea as quickly as possible, stopping to think only when necessary. The goal is to not spend too much time overthinking the implementation -- you want to find out if your idea is worth executing on.

If you decide that your idea isn't worth it, then you move on to your next one. Otherwise you take it slow, going back over your code and refactoring it. (I personally don't believe in "make one to throw away", but rather that it's possible to refactor an ugly design into a succinct one.) At this stage, you should meditate on the best way to accomplish your engineering goals. It will pay off in the long run to spend extra time here.

Then comes the final stage in your project's lifecycle: medium. The core structure of the design has solidified, and you need to add the flourishes that make software truly great. But you have to take your time to ensure that the codebase stays clean. At this point, the design of the various smaller subsystems should flow naturally from the architecture you decided on in the "slow" phase.

Repeat for each core feature.

As for Yammer itself, I'm thoroughly unimpressed. At the least they could have made it look different than twitter. They even copied the UI. There were so many companies doing truly innovative things... TechCrunch50 seems like a total farce.

Better to take the risk (if you can) and have a real shot at success than always be waiting until "tomorrow". He's forcing himself to succeed or fail. People are capable of a lot when they don't have an easy out. How many successful companies were side projects? Maybe 5-10%? That's a damn low number if you realize how many people have side projects they wish they had the balls to turn into companies.

My big concern is that $15k just isn't that much cash. Unless you're living somewhere ridiculously cheap or rent free (parents) that's probably just a few months. Not enough to get the profitability for almost anyone. YC companies only work because they get 3-4 months free, can spend their own money after that, and have a really good shot at getting funding.

Hats off to you, Palish. Good luck.

And this isn't a problem of "testing them all". It's not like there's 4 rogue configurations floating around in the Windows ecosystem. It's TENS of THOUSANDS of people, and the problem falls well within what should be standard pre-release testing.

And I think people would be far less upset if it weren't for the fact that Apple tries to pretend it doesn't do things like install bloatware.

It's here, it's open source, and it's free software! Dropbox for Linux is finally available and ready for your everyday use.

Further down the page:

-- dropboxd is a per-user closed-source daemon process that makes sure your $HOME/Dropbox directory is properly synchronized.

You've chosen to actually do instead of just pipe-dream, and you're taking a huge risk all for the reward of working on something you actually love doing. This is what life is all about.

Even if this attempt fails, you've already won.

1. The claim was that in crappier weather people tend to stay in and work instead of lounging about in the sun. That's not to say that this is true, but simply stating that SV has good weather is missing the point.

2. Just because there are lots of people in the Valley to recruit doesn't mean they are automatically better than workers from elsewhere. The ease at which you can fill your company with seemingly qualified people is not tied with how good of a product of how successful a company will be. The article makes a good point about ship jumping and spiking salaries.

3. Your again confusing quantity with quality. You'll still be groveling to get a chance to present at any of the top level VC's in SV and since there are a lot more presentations being made, the chances that they've seen same idea you're trying to present three times already that week means you'll still likely have to settle with the bottom of the VC pile. That is unless you have a good idea and a good presentation in which case top VC's in Boston, Tel Aviv or any other place would be just as happy to have you. This is all besides the fact that plenty of successful startups bootstrapped themselves to success.

4. A startup does not need to 'Exit' in order to be successful. Not all startups have the goal of hoping that Google/MS/Yahoo/Ebay will one day look down pick them as the prettiest girl at the dance, some startups want to be the ones doing the picking and plenty are fine just making decent money doing something they love. A narrow focus of an Exit only strategy puts many startups in an early grave despite good chances of becoming successful in other ways.

5. Good board members can be found just about anywhere on the planet and with teleconferencing technology as it is now, being located in the same city as every board member is not necessary and actually might be a hindrance. Besides that, I'm not quite sure what three other bubbles happened in SV other than the Dot Com one?

There are plenty of good reasons to startup in SV, but that don't make it the only place where a startup can be successful.

(also, thanks for using Dropbox...)