Facebook Interview from June of 2005
(via soupsoup)
“Songs you listen to often on Spotify sit, encrypted, on your hard drive. The application looks first for these; if it doesn’t find them, it pulls down 15 seconds of the song from the closest server while it looks for copies of the rest of the song on the hard drives of other users near you. This is file sharing. It increases speed and lowers the demand on central servers by spreading it among several connections. Spotify and The Pirate Bay don’t just share a country; they share an operating system.”
Some of the magic why Spotify is such a slick service.
Daniel Ek’s Spotify: Music’s Last Best Hope - BusinessWeek
(via soupsoup)
“It’s like a woman covering up her dynamic personality and stunning intellectual assets in order to “make her relationship work” because her boyfriend is intimidated by her.”
Such a perfect line. Netflix is just trying to keep the studios at bay for a little linger, before they turn on them.
Learn Python The Hard Way, 2nd Edition
This has been on my list of stuff to get done this summer. I got started this week and am really into it.
“A programmer will eventually tell you to use Mac OSX or Linux. If the programmer likes fonts and typography, they’ll tell you to get a Mac OSX computer. If they like control and have a huge beard, they’ll tell you to install Linux. Again, use whatever computer you have right now that works.”
Exercise 0: The Setup — Learn Python The Hard Way, 2nd Edition
Today, I (start to) step up my coding game.
The quip about the beard got me.
Who is the winner in the short time since the Google+ launch?
Tom Anderson
Haters gonna hate. He was the first big name in the Web2.0 world. While the creation story of Myspace may not be a perfect model to emulate, it was still an awesome story. People will always love/hate him and his over the shoulder stare.
But damn if he is killing it these last few weeks! His Google+ profile is one of the most active and he has consistantly been a go to place for analysis and observations on Google and Facebook peppered with his smart ass remarks.
Make a movie about Myspace. The whole story. The porn, the rise, the Rupert, the fall. I mean, have you ever heard of how badass Tom Anderson was as a kid?! There is your first act!
“My original vision for MS was that everything got better when it was social—so I tried to build all the super popular things used on the web (blogs, music, classifieds, events, photos) on top of MySpace’s social layer. When Yahoo launched 360, MSN launched Spaces, and Google launched Okrut, I was shakin in my boots. But quickly I saw that it’s really hard to layer in social to features after the fact. At MySpace we had the luxury of having social first, and building the products on top of that layer. Then I choked and Facebook realized that vision. ;-)”
From Tom Anderson’s initial thoughts on Google+
I love hearing war stories from companies past. It is the equivalent of ex Senators that release memoirs a decade after the fact and finally admit “Yeah, we were making it all up as we went.”
Here is Stephen Colbert taking donations for his SuperPAC via iPad while standing outside the headquarters of the FEC. Later, people throw balled-up wads of cash at him. All of this while outside the headquarters of the agency that regulates campaign finance. It is doubtful you will find a funnier piece of political comedy this year, but then Stephen Colbert now has the ability to run campaign ads, so we’ll see where that goes.
Using Square no less!
(via absurdlakefront)
“The more we live in public, and the more news is replaced with facile banter, the more opportunities journalists and politicians have to inadvertently reveal sides of themselves that should remain hidden. We have to find a way to deal with this without destroying careers over inevitable momentary lapses.”
The B•Line - A special phone for prospective clients
Twitter launches Twitter for Newsrooms, with advanced search
If You're Competing On Features You've Already Lost
The only thing more tragic than the amount of driving around in my car I had to do this week were the radio spots for Android phones that I had to suffer through while doing so. Though I’m not sure which of the many Android devices they were actually selling, the script was pretty much the same- a…
Bryce stole the words right out of my mouth.
I winse each time I hear an ad pushing a phone’s features rather than its value to the consumer. Listing items from a products spec sheet doesn’t add value. It hurts.
Apple doesn’t run adds pimping how fast the processor is on the iPhone, they just show you what it can do for you. They hardly use the word GPS in ads, they simply show you what it means.
It works.
“Investors are trying to find the exceptional outcomes, so they are looking for something exceptional about the company. Instead of trying to do everything well (traction, team, product, social proof, pitch, etc), do one thing exceptional. As a startup you have to be exceptional in at least one regard.”
Naval Ravikant of AngelList and VentureHacks
Startups of Chicago, I am coming for you.
I started TheLi.st to collect my thoughts and chronicle my journey through the startup world. I moved to Chicago 6 months ago because I believe it will be the startup destination over the next few years. The incoming capital has began to match the level of talent and passion Chicago is offering. So many great teams building fun, intriguing and of course big things. Hell, that’s just Lightbank!
So, if you are a startup in Chicago, I would love the chance to sit down and talk.
If you’d like a copy of my resume or a little more information on who I am, check out hire.bradeshbach.com
Any and all help and high fives are appreciated!
