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December 2007

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12.29.07

Extinction City of the Future | (0)
The Yangtze fresh water dolphin in China has recently been declared extinct after an extensive search for the last one. Meanwhile, I watch a nature show or read a magazine, and learn that some amazing species of large mammals, including certain tigers and elephants, have fewer than a couple hundred left alive. There are some brave souls out in these habitats risking life and limb to save severely endangered species from human-inspired extinction. It begs the question about how human being can live in such a way as to completely destroy large forms of mammal life. It ...
12.26.07

Gallons of Gas per Barrel of Oil The Environment | (3)
There are 42 gallons of oil per barrel, but a much lessor amount gets converted into gasoline. Using simple refining techniques, just 5% (Venezuela) to 30% (Texan and Arabic) of the oil can be converted to gasoline. More advanced (and expensive) techniques are required to get higher percentages of gasoline from oil. This means that 1 barrel of oil generates between 2.1 and 12.6 gallons of gasoline in an easy manner. What does $100 barrels of oil prices mean to the pricing at the gas station?
12.25.07

Ruby on Rails: A Vista Dev Environment Opinion | (1)
After my 17" Mac Book Pro caught fire the other day and then the replacement MacBook broke again, I decided to turn my Lenovo X61 Tablet into a "Ruby on Rails" development environment for TheFunded.com. It is well known that Rails is not optimized for Windows, but I managed to get an impressive system in place. Here is the infrastructure that I already had in place: Host at Rails Machine on a virtual server that can be easily upgraded as more capacity is needed - http://railsmachine.com/ Use Subversion for asset management and version control - http://subversion.tigris.org/ Use Capistrano to deploy from a development environment ...
12.25.07

The Story behind Anonymity and Coming Out TheFunded.com | (0)
Running a high profile and controversial site as anonymous is a great experience. You choose what you do, when you work, and who you respond to, all while your email inbox is empty. There is complete freedom. BUT, there are drawbacks, too. You don't have anyone to discuss ideas with. You only hear anecdotal stories about the quality of work. You can't go on the offensive or defensive to make a point. You make embarrassing slip ups. Anonymity was a key ingredient to the success of TheFunded.com, which formally launched to the public (versus a small group of insiders) on March ...
12.25.07

Scaling and the Media TheFunded.com | (1)
There is an interesting article in INC Magazine here mentioned by a Member on TheFunded.com. The particular page linked to above caught my attention because of the references to lure and distraction of public relations. The point by the founder of Friendster in the article is right on. I am spending a lot more time fielding opportunities in the media, and it's a lot of fun. This might mean that I am not able to spend as much time dealing with the planning, design, and development of TheFunded.com. Thankfully, I saw this dilemma coming and reacted by hiring a public relations firm, ...
12.24.07

Is Series FF (Founders Fund) stock a sham? City of the Future | (3)
While browsing a legal site aimed at start-ups that was mentioned on TheFunded.com, I saw this article: http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2007/12/22/what-is-series-ff-stock/ Hmm. Series FF stock does not seem all that special. Basically, it is stock that you can sell to investors in later rounds with the preferences of the later rounds as long as everyone and their mother let's you do it. The later stage preferences only kick in for the buyer if the stock is sold. It does incent founders to increase stock price. When I first heard about the concept and the approach taken by the Founders Fund, I was impressed. Now that I ...
12.24.07

Bullies 0 / Rating Sites 1 TheFunded.com | (0)
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik dismissed a case against the lawyer review site, Avvo. The suit was foolish, at best. One of the two lawyer plaintiffs, Browne, claimed that the Avvo rating system was clearly wrong because he his rating on Avvo was only "5.5," yet a magazine had previously rated him as a "Super Lawyer." How do you even respond to that? Here is a copy of the decision. This is great news for TheFunded.com, since everything from the First Amendment to the Communications Decency Act was cited in by Judge Lasnik in the acquittal. There is some chance for ...
12.24.07

Just Bought Gold Opinion | (0)
It's Christmas Eve, and I purchased a bunch of GLD. It just seemed like a logical investment given the market uncertainty. We shall see. The purchase was inspired by http://www.covestor.com. It might be worth researching some portfolio strategies using this service... you never know. The site is missing the Magic Sauce, though. I was engaged, and then it lost me, and it lost me quickly. The entire top of the page is wasted space. The Rankings section seemed like it would be amazing. Instead, it sucked. For example, you could only select two criteria to narrow down the list, ...
12.23.07

“Magic” Sauce Opinion | (0)
It seems like the difference between success and failure these days boils down to an ounce of something special. To eliminate the image from the Simpsons of "mayo left in the sun," let's call it magic sauce. It normally boils down to subtle decisions in the interface or formula that means the difference between success and failure. Example: creating a MySpace account to view photos. Millions of MySpace pages were created to look at photos of others, creating a pyramid scheme of user adoption. On TheFunded, it was public and private reviews: what did the private reviews actually say? Thousands of ...
12.23.07

Wiki Syntax City of the Future | (0)
Collective content creation is on the rise, and Wiki syntax will be the backbone. Wiki syntax is all over the map, ranging from simple to complex. As an avid Wiki user, I want a simple yet feature-rich syntax. I want that syntax to work everywhere I Wiki. I want my formatting to be imported into and exported from word processors. Guess what? Not happening. There are multiple competing standards. Right now, I am using the following syntax: http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/ There are things that I like about this syntax, and things that I hate. For example, making items bold requires three single quotes, like '''. ...

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