Don't think I have read about any well-funded startups in this area yet, but boy there's a business opportunity here. Aside from the major historical locations, most every state/city in the US has a "historical society" of some sort that has thousands/millions of old pictures laying around. My own (Minneapolis) had a project many years back where they went around and took a pic of every single house in the city limits. I'd like to be able to go to a cool neighborhood and point my phone to a street corner and see what was there, sort of my own interactive history lesson. Rather than each of these government agencies or museums figuring out how to do an aug reality app on their own dime, someone needs to build the template/service and offer it up.
I'm sure tax rates play a role, but think the bigger issue is the lack of depth and/or interest among angels/VCs for software start-ups in MN. Now, if you have a medical device start-up spinning out of Medtronic or the U of MN, that's another story...
Isn't the problem bigger than a small number of people not paying attention to their Twitter client re-shortening links when it's not necessary? Aren't people intentionally re-shortening links they get from others, so that they can track their own reach/influence? If I have a big following and I re-shorten your link, I can then go to Bit.ly or (anywhere else I have an account) and exactly measure how that link was spread across the net, regardless of whether any RTs mention me. "I'll take your short link and raise you my own..."
Thanks for the comments. I should have made a better distinction between actual and codified process. My thoughts were toward codified, which, as you state, are endemic in larger organizations, and seem to build on themselves over the years, good and bad, until less and less actual progress toward the ultimate goals of the organization is accomplished. Process is delivered, rather than products...
Although I did not agree with everything in the Netflix deck, I was impressed by the "bias" toward great people rather than great process, which seems to me, to be a fresh take on it. There will always be necessary processes and there are certainly many great process best practices to draw from, but I do think we should all be CONSTANTLY QUESTIONING what is in place, asking ourselves if it is serving us or we serving it, and making changes as needed. It is my experience that this happens rarely in large organizations. There simply isn't the political will to take it on...
Thanks for the comment. no, I'm actually not even talking about the process of building software, (as I stated in the post), and am anything but a "cowboy". I'm talking about all the dozens of other processes that add zero value to the product, that are put in place with the best of intentions, and add all kinds of cost....things like spending 30 minutes a day tracking time for every meeting attended against an activity/project, multiple processes taking weeks for acquiring a server, weeks spent in generating documents that are not even looked at by others, etc... hopefully that makes sense.
Good points thanks. Best-case scenario would be a 20K-50K project on a consulting basis, that might turn into a full-time gig if the idea proves viable. Still seems like work of this size falls between the cracks...