If they're still dependent on Samsung for their main processor it kinda makes you wonder how well they're doing finding another processor for the iPhone 5.
I know the 4S just came out but traditionally iPhones have come out over the summer so we might see the iPhone 5 as soon as 7 months from now.
As a business owner who once had their Paypal account frozen (mistakenly, but frozen nonetheless) 10 years ago and now does $10,000+ every month through Paypal I can say they're doing something wrong. Paypal doesn't need to steal money, they make billions a year, they don't need your $45,000.
Something smells rotten and it's Diaspora. $200,000 and over one year later and they have nothing to show for it and they're still begging for money. They promised a finished product for $10,000, they received $200,000 and they're still not done. Why are people still giving them money? If a contractor said $10,000 to replace my roof and I gave him $200,000 and he came back saying he needed more I'd call the police and sue, not give him another $45,000
So what happens when they get another 20k or 60k or 200k and they say "oops that's not enough", everyone gets a refund? Or does Diaspora walk away? Or do they hold another donation round in a year?
Sooo disappointed in Diaspora, so many startups could have been created with $200k but they burned the money and now they're back asking for more, like watching a homeless guy buy alcohol with the 20 you just gave him and he comes back asking for more money.
Zuckerberg was just an average programmer and he made Facebook with almost no funding while attending college, these four get $200,000 and make nothing.
I'd love to know what these donators are thinking, can anyone give me a good reason why it's a good idea to keep giving Diaspora money when they already show no progress from the first $200,000 they were given? If you're a donator how will you feel when they receive another 20 or 200k and Diaspora is still a flop?
My idea... well it doesn't suck, but it was more work than what it needed to be. After a few thousand customers I realized what needed to be done. Now it's better but not quite where I want it to be, still need to pour more $$$ in to get it there.
Problem is you need at least a few hundred customers before you start noticing the cracks in your idea. If your idea sucks so bad that you can't get a few hundred people to believe in you enough to give you $$$ then it probably is so bad that you shouldn't do it.
(no, i haven't submitted to ycombinator yet, I'm waiting for a swift kick in the ass)
Why is a 1080p monitor for 1995 "amazing"? It was quite common for 21" monitors to be 1600x1200 and 1920x1080 isn't a giant leap from that. I picked up a cheap 21" CRT capable of 1600x1200 in the late 90s and I'm no John Carmack.
I think it's because that sounds amazing to average consumers, who were lucky to have 1024x768 on a dot pitch better than 0.28, but why is this on geek.com? Shouldn't most of their readers remember having large, heavy monitors in the 90s? Really makes me wonder what Matthew Humphries (author of that story) was using in 1995.
CRTs weren't like LCDs, the image didn't push off the side if you pushed the resolution too far, you could pretty much push them as far as they could go until you couldn't read it anymore or until it became all vertical lines. Ah, the good ole days...
I like TC, but for the past few years it seems to have lost focus. Ever since Arrington made a giant stink about the CrunchPad in 2009 the site has really introverted, wasting time talking about themselves rather than focusing on new startups and what's on the horizon. It's more like a forum with overbearing moderators rather than a "blog about technology start-ups".
I still read TechCrunch a few times a week but you have to wade through a lot of garbage to get to the good stuff. Slashdot I visit several times a day.
Every founder should have studied programming at some point, at least CS101 and CS201, at least enough to know what's possible and what's not.
I have a bootstrapped startup. I also left CS my junior year several years ago after running out of money. I haven't touched programming since so it's easier and less time consuming for me to hire a freelancer for a few bucks than it is to hit the books again. Even though I'm not doing the programming I'm grateful every day that I have that programming experience since I know if what I'm asking is possible or not. I have friends with ideas that ask me about programming or websites all the time and some of the things they think programming can do is shocking, the average person is completely clueless when it comes to how things work. Possible: "when someone signs-up on the website send them a confirmation message with a link asking them to like us on Facebook". Not possible: "when someone signs up send them a confirmation message and automatically have them click Like on our Facebook fan page".