Exactly. When I was reading this, the first thing that came to my mind was that my MacBook has a multi-touch trackpad. Probably the solution would be to enable a mouse pointer over flash content.
But gaming is a much lesser experience with a trackpad then it is with mouse and keyboard; my Bloonz scores with and without a mouse prove it. Also, this doesn't get around the many games that require a keyboard.
I know a 60 year old man with a 150ish IQ who owns nothing, is $4,000 in debt for a van, and hasn't worked in 20 years. He has tons of crazy pipe dreams and ambitions to be great, but he doesn't work towards them at all. Diligence > Intelligence.
I know a lawyer of 16 years with a 145 IQ who is still making 55K a year. Ambition and diligence go hand in hand. She got the job right out of college and grew complacent, and now rarely attempts to find a better position somewhere else. Starting her own firm is almost certainly not going to happen. Other than diligence, lack of courage is also an issue there. Quitting your job and trying to build a clientele is scary.
I also know a very bright lady who cleans motels because she can't deal with people and just doesn't like working that hard. She works a few hours a day, at three separate places, with long breaks in between. She probably knows more about computers than I do; she's been manipulating them since before I was born, but she hates pressure, she hates deadlines, and she lacks confidence.
Trying to list all the unpublished author-hopefuls I know who just stopped submitting stuff would be an exercise in futility.
Yesterday, I came back from Russia. Though this wasn't my first time there. The first thing you notice there, is that there's plenty of illegal competition. In one of the biggest shopping centers in Moscow, there is a shop just a side of an authorized Apple reseller that tries to sell you an iPhone (which is actually a chinese TVPhone).
Apart from this, I really do think that Russia needs its own Silicon Valley with VCs and Incubators from U.S. There are many talented people with innovative ideas and products.
Speaking of corruption level and unsafe environment, I don't think that India is better, but nevertheless they have their own SV with well-established VCs from the States.
India is perfectly safe. There is also a vibrant technology economy already in place in many cities - albeit service based. This is a very different circumstance than Russia.
Is this really true? I may be wrong, but from what I've heard - India is perfectly safe in a few cities.
Perhaps, I didn't get into any trouble in Russia(and I was not only in Moscow, but in small 200km away from Moscow cities) because I'm white and speak fluent Russian. Anyway, as the saying goes "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step". Once, everything was built from just an idea.
India's cities are by and large safe (unless you are doing something really weird/ in the sleazy parts - every city has its dangerous parts just like every American city I know of). You do have the very occasional sensational attack on foreigners which grabs the headlins.
I have friends from the USA, Sweden etc who have been living here for years without getting into any trouble. The best way to decide such things is to talk to someone you know who has already lived here.
And we don't quite have our "Silicon Valley" yet, though Bangalore has many outsourcing companies and offshore development centres where large companies in the USA or Europe offload work no one there wants to do. But yes, (as rjurney points out) there are cities with very large populations of programmers, Bangalore being the prototypical example.
It really is true. You can travel by train across India as a foreigner, everyone staring at you, and not have any problems. That doesn't mean common sense does not apply, but overall India is very safe - crime wise. You'd better look out for cars, though ;) There is corruption, but there is also a strong culture imposing limits. Its complicated, but I rarely feared for my safety in India. I frequently did so in Moscow - nazis, militsia, thugs, etc. etc.
As to everything being built from an idea - thats true. But its a question of whether that is the right idea for that place. No one can doubt that there is an abundance of brilliant hackers coming out of Moscow. But the 'silicon valley' model requires an abundance of social capital - and Moscow is incredibly impoverished in this area, despite being relatively wealthy, it has very, very little social capital.
Seriously, if a user has only an email and Skype account(it's true for me, and in my experience, it's true for many other people) and doesn't have FB, Twitter, etc., does it mean he/she won't be able to use this feature?
I know there was always a lot of potential in technology that incorporates the "don't make them think". But honestly, do you really want a software to choose a gift for your girl friend? I want my personal stuff to be private and personal.
P.S. I'm not criticizing or anything - actually, I always admire software that changes to fit to a user's needs, not the opposite. But managing relationships.. No, thank you. :)
Actually, it reminded me of an example from an audiobook I listened to a few months ago about the Freemium model.
There was an example of one of the first Gillette's marketing campaigns. Basically, they gave away blades for free but to use them you had to buy a razor.
That example is definitely not similar to the StatSheet model. I'm talking about selling pieces of a free web site. You can't use the razor without buying the blades.
Isn't this somewhere in between of subscription and one-time payment? Users still get the sense of 'ownership' and based on a product, businesses can get payments almost as if it was a subscription service.
Though I absolutely understand that this model can't fit all, but I find it to be a good option to consider.
Instead of writing code in Objective C, you can try to use something like PhoneGap( http://phonegap.com/ ). Though I'm not sure if it's suitable for making games and other graphic intensive stuff.
When I applied about a year ago at TechStars, I was a single founder. I had a meet-up with David Cohen from the TechStars and asked him on this. He told me: "It's very difficult to run the business being a single founder. You should probably keep on searching and then just email me if anything has changed".
While I do believe that successful business can be created by a single founder, I don't think that this is an issue when you're searching for someone to invest in your business. Anyway, I wish you good luck.
I use home button to open the Google homepage whenever I need to close all tabs in browser without closing the browser itself. So the Google homepage in that opened tab is like a placeholder. Anyway, I have no specific reason for doing this - it's just a habit.
