OffScale is developing a new breed of database management and automation tools. We're looking into ways to make the trial experience as easy as possible. We have just released a precofigured EC2 image available as a way for users to try our product.

We'd love to get some feedback on this approach: 1. How can we make the experience even better? 2. If you have experience regarding EC2 as a marketing tool, did it work for you? What have you learned from that experience?

It's really hard to do lean satellite development. There's a set of constraints that prevent this type of problem from being developed and deployed iteratively.

Except for identifying the fact that the opportunity has been missed and closing shop earlier, I can't really think of what I would have done differently.

What do you suggest? How would you lean the process?

It's a tough question, but I think the key is "customer development." Lock in users and use cases with contracts before launching the satellites, and map out what could be emerging threats. With the mobility space, it was already rapidly, rapidly changing, and I think their customers were more this imaginary, high-flying James Bond-style business executive.

How many people really need a phone that covers them in "middle of the Arctic Ocean to the jungles of Africa to the remote mountain peaks of the Himalayas"? The answer is: "Not a sustainable market."

I don't know if the numbers pencilled out, but Teledesic, another company with similar ambitions, but, I think, using satellites in lower orbit, was trying to get some long term customers from countries with a lot of wide open spaces, where the cost of providing wired infrastructure, or even wireless infrastructure strung together with point to point microwave connections, was prohibitive.

Australia was one of their targets, but I think also some of the telcos in the western US, which had obligations to provide service, even in sparsely populated areas.

but yeah. big Fail

I must admit I haven't read any deeper, so you may be right. I think, however, that if you combine the rulings over time, you will notice that the spirit of the law, as it is interpreted by the courts is in favor of the copyright owner. And the copyright owners are not in the business of being reasonable.

As Larry Lessig points out, common sense is a rare idea in the practice of law.

I actually approve this argument. My personal experience also shows that usability testing can be done with very few people at a time, over many iterations. Obviously, this is not a universal rule. It's useful for practical usability testing, but not for testing all cognitive processes. Perhaps, if the variations are small enough, it may be sufficient.

Technically, I think the title is very accurate. The fact that Shareaholic has an option to turn it off, makes it less sinister, but in my book, collecting my surfing statistic is spying on me. The post states facts, and doesn't bash Shareaholic.

It helped me to think about it in terms of connected graphs. Nodes are versions and arcs are changes. A path between two versions is the aggregation of changes. Merging then becomes walking down the same path, but starting from a different node. I start at my current version node, and I walk down your path of changes. It's very different than trying to merge two nodes.

(This is just my mental model, no need to read into it more than that)

There should be a startup to provide anonymity through clutter. By creating fake identities with your name, you could make Google search less effective. This will neutralize most of the results, as the searcher will no longer know which of these sites is really yours.

There are a few. Here's a popular one:

http://www.reputationdefender.com/

Just a bit. There are a few GreaseMonkey functions that are not supported by Chrome (which can run some GreaseMonkey scripts natively, unless they use them). I had to replace them with something chrome understands. It isn't that difficult. In fact, I think I can make a more general ChromeMonkey to support all GeaseMonkey scripts, but I won't be sure before I try.

Exactly my thought. I moved to Chrome a few weeks back, and this was the only thing I was missing.

Yeah, I couldn't find a way to exclude pages on Chrome extensions. But I haven't thought about how I may identify dead pages from code. I have an idea I'll try out soon. If it works, the extension will be updated automatically.

Each page now needs to pass the following test of interest: [points>months passed since post].

Pages that are dead/not interesting will stop appearing after a month, but interesting pages will linger on. It was important for me to keep the element of serendipity, so I can still find conversations that were once interesting.

I think it is kind of nice that you can suddenly revive a submission or dive into old commentary.

Perhaps you shouldn't display anything older than 3 months, as after 3 months one can re-submit the page.

Thanks for continuing to improve it.