Post-its are hard to beat because they function as a backdrop and everyone walks by a couple of times per day, whether they want to or not.
For remote teams that run on Slack, give http://www.slash-done.com/ a try - a good friend of mine had this built after missing a simple way of having everyone check in once their tasks were completed.
For anyone else wondering: author of Leo Explores is Leo Polovets @lpolovets
Twitter bio:
"Partner @SusaVentures. Before: 2nd non-founding engineer @LinkedIn → @Google → early engineer @Factual. I love travel, good food, reading, and helping others.
Palo Alto, CA · codingvc.com"
Regarding prior notice et al.: "Private API" is a slight understatement IMO. Uber is running a $3.4bn business and their car data is a lot of what makes them valuable. I wouldn't blame them for automatically blacklisting accounts with unusual usage patterns just to be safe.
The Blue Card requires that you have a job contract or very concrete job offer with a minimum salary, and will more or less be tied to that job: If you lose your job, they apparently can give you some time to find a new one, but you may get kicked out if you fail in that endeavor. Also, if you want to change jobs away from the one that originally got you the Blue Card, you'll have to get formal approval. (Edit: this would probably apply to a regular work permit, as well. I'm German, so I never had this problem. Still, you can apparently even apply to get a work permit as a freelancer, which would then make life much easier for you if you don't want to tie yourself to a Blue Card job for that long.)
Other than that, there seems to be no catch - the Blue Card is meant to attract highly skilled workers, so once that hurdle is cleared (>> minimum salary, university education, easier for certain high-in-demand sectors), the EU countries seem pretty happy to have Blue Card holders stay - as they should be.
To be frank, I don't share the excitement (or now sadness about loss) either:
I was hoping it would set an example for the European ecosystem (...)
but [we] decided to join another incubator instead.
We ourselves ultimately were lucky to get into Seedcamp
That's 2 for 2 against HackFWD - apparently, the setup wasn't as great as the marketing made it look?
(it is way easier to teach marketing & business skills
to engineers than the other way round)
Looking at the HackFWD companies, that doesn't seem to apply with the broadness that the statement suggests. Could it be that someone who actually went through the steps (Paul Graham, developer - built, founded and exited Viaweb) is in a better position to pass on knowledge on that than someone who didn't (Lars Hinrichs, business guy - hired developers, founded and excited Xing)?
While I find the passion, generosity and appetite for risk behind HackFWD more than commendable: it looks like it would have taken a larger vision (possibly even larger & more costly than YC) to carry a tech-focused EU incubator forward. I understand that the decision to cut losses is probably the right one, but if he's unwilling to stick it out for 5-7+ years - YC was started in March 2005! -, maybe he shouldn't have started HackFWD in the first place. The way it stands now, the one who benefited most seems to have been Lars through publicity and reputation (cf. European Commission etc.)
Definitely listen to the Freakonomics podcast on Chicago's quintessential role in developing the US as a country and economic giant - well worth the 30min or so, and based on a book by Thomas Dyja: http://freakonomics.com/2013/08/15/the-middle-of-everywhere-...
It doesn't bring the $1m kick-off grant for the fertility fund, but another new app in that space is http://www.helloclue.com/
It focuses more on tracking the monthly cycle and how it affects you personally, instead of pregnancy/ fertility and crowdsourced data on conception. Clue was actually started by a female founder - seems that could be helpful in this instance.
Incorrectness of linked article's headline was pointed out already. Also, this is not the "German Government", it's the CDU/CSU conservative party's election agenda. Yes, they are the party of the chancellor, but it's obvious that a whole ton of proposals buried in the election agenda never see the light of day despite the party winning a majority and having the Chancellor elect. So even IF the CDU/CSU decided to move away from data retention in their election agenda, it would remain to be seen if this translated into actual laws. And since they didn't even move away...
tl;dr: Esp. for standard positions, Berlin combines low salaries & rents with a growing (young & international) population and trustworthy German processes; bureaucracy is the same hassle all over Europe.
--
Germany is no(t much) better or worse than other EU countries in terms of bureaucracy or immigration barriers. To deal with legal/ tax/ privacy stuff, you would mostly set up a formal HQ in Ireland, Luxemburg or Switzerland (the latter being home to Groupon EU's legal HQ).
The comparatively low salaries across the board in Berlin coupled with the potential for subsidies from the state make it a good proposition to have a working office.
(If you're looking for engineers and highly skilled staff, Zurich and Munich still have an edge but are much more expensive.) Berlin is also large enough to have a talent pool for most positions/ departments and is growing due to perceived and/ or real attractiveness. And with the influx of young people from all over the world, informal immigration barriers like language are vanishing, too.
To me, the Netflix price is as much about marketing as it is about the quality of the algorithm: Netflix was ahead of the pack (i.e. Blockbuster) even before, but after spreading the word that it takes rocket scientists to even slightly improve the existing algorithm, who would even think twice about testing a DVD/ streaming provider other than Netflix?
BTW, thanks a lot for the sticky notes - I was fearing another very carefully designed presentation with few words that works for the actual audience, but not an individual reader.
If not as a video recording of the presentation (- Google bought this amazing startup that allowed embeds of the presentation slides and video synced up in adjacent windows), this is how all presentations should be posted.
I felt like I knew a little about Bitcoin, but I fail to grasp whatever this article is saying. Can anyone translate the "empty blocks" and 15 vs. 51% part and its implications? Also, wouldn't 15% of the network computing power require more than a simple webserver? Thanks.
As a non-tech observer, Azure actually struck me as an honest attempt by Microsoft to add a compelling offer to the mix.
However, their status page-cum-website seem to be hosted on Azure itself, which is ridiculous in a situation like this. (Almost like Twitter having a status page on tumblr.)
Worst of all, even www.twitter.com/windowsazure offers no comment at all so far. Isn't this wiping out any credibility they might have built up with developers? Is anyone affected?
Edit: if this truly is because of 2/29, I guess anyone signing up from now on will get perfect service.
Though be careful not to confuse "business head" with "a person capable of adding a business model to a solution and bringing revenue from 0 to 10m within 2 months".
Depending on your idea, I've seen CS Ph.D. students take on board a former management consultant with 2-3 years of work experience as CFO. (data integration solution that sells to corporate customers) His motivation? Less hot air, more opportunity to advance an actual project.
Alastair, if you're talking about Taxonomy - really liked your custom maps blog post, btw, even though I'm not a tech guy myself -, someone at college might be well-suited, as you seem to be working on a solution that needs larger-scale consumer adoption and an interesting story to sell (PR-wise) in order to be successful.
I am always amazed at the number of business students I know (of) that are happy to intern at (commercial) startups or company builders and end up "community managing" the Facebook page, just because the business founders are successful at pitching their Groupon clone. If you give a talk at a university etc. and mention you welcome feedback on which feature is missing (>> ask for advice, you get money; ask for money, you get advice) afterwards, you might just find someone with a good product sense that also doesn't mind approaching people, and spare them that fate.