The past sixth months we’ve seen an explosion in the DC community. Events where we normally may have expected a few dozen of the same faces to show up have now grown into the hundreds. There seems to be this constant flow of new people, new companies, and general enthusiasm around creating new ventures in the region. We’re hoping that this becomes self sustaining, and all signs point...
When evaluating an idea, and considering making a serious push for it, we’re always told to focus on validating the idea. Who says it’s solving a real-life need, and not just a solution in search of a problem? I looked everywhere for validation on my idea. Of course I felt it was needed, as did a select few entrepreneurs. But I received rejection from everywhere. VCs I met with said...
A while back I had posted my thoughts on the future of television. Other people, such as Jeff Pulver, have also had this in their crosshairs. While others are entrenched in how we will watch TV, and where it’s coming from. I’m more interested in what we do while watching TV, particularly integrating the social element that we have when watching a show with other people. Looks like CBS...
Tom Friedman, author of The World Is Flat and From Beirut to Jerusalem, was on Meet the Press promoting his new book and gave a great and inspirational interview. Posting here because it’s definitely worth watching.
“100,000 people in 100,000 garages” – great line.
A little over two years ago, in the summer between graduating and starting a “real job” I spent a good amount of time at the gym, brushing up on my various web skills, and building cool apps. I didn’t necessarily want to get rich off them, they were more exercises in taking my ideas and actually doing something with them, rather than letting them linger in the netherworld of...
I touched on this before, but Marc Andreesen’s essay about careers and creating and accepting opportunities rather than having a definite plan really resonated in me. I believe a huge part of what people would like to refer to as “career planning” is being continuously alert to opportunities that present themselves to you spontaneously, when you happen to be in the right place...
I’m thinking about starting an open source project, based on a need I see. I’m working on fleshing out the idea a little bit more, and recruiting some local PHP developers I know to help me. I don’t have time for this, but who does? One of the great things about developing third-party applications on Facebook and other platforms is that everything related to user authentication...
Let’s pretend for a second that the writers weren’t on strike, and we had decent TV on. Watching TV is enjoyable, right? It’s also fun to watch it with others. In college, we’d always get together to watch the latest episode, talk about it, etc. A shared experience is always better than sitting alone on your couch. But nowadays, I come home from work, and by the time...
As I mentioned in a previous post, new avenues of communication complement, not replace, older methods of communication. There are a ton of ways to get in touch with me. How do you choose which one to contact for each person? My idea? Create a system where you can sign up for a special e-mail address that connects to all your different social media accounts. Any e-mail to that address will get...
Since the Facebook Platform has been launched a number of months ago, allowing anyone to write an application that can interact with Facebook users in any number of ways, thousands of such applications have been released. While many startups are forming (and existing ones) focusing solely on Facebook applications, a viable business model for a web app existing solely within the walled garden of...