Linked List: April 21, 2008

Monday, 21 April 2008

Paul Graham: ‘Be Good’ 

Paul Graham:

If you start from successful startups, you find they often behaved like nonprofits. And if you start from ideas for nonprofits, you find they’d often make good startups.

His argument, more or less, is that if you use “do what’s best for the users” as your rule of thumb for any decision, you’re more likely to grow into a successful business. He even makes the case that this was true for Microsoft during their years of phenomenal growth.

Ryan Singel, reporting for Wired News:

Seeking to make money from mistyped website names, some of the United States’ largest ISPs instead created a massive security hole that allowed hackers to use web addresses owned by eBay, PayPal, Google and Yahoo, and virtually any other large site.

(Thanks to Chris Pepper.)

More on Localized Folder Names 

Jory K. Prum, on the confusion resulting from localized folder names in Mac OS X:

Can I create a directory named “Desktop” in ~ when the Desktop folder is called “Skrivebord”? Can I create a “Skrivebord” directory when there’s already one in the home directory?

The answer is simple and the results just add to the confusion of the clusterfuck: I cannot create a folder called “Desktop” in ~ even when the localized one is called something else, as I am told by the Finder (in Norwegian, in this case) that there is already a folder with the same name! Of course, the user cannot see this folder name being used, so there’s a great source of confusion.

But it gets better! I can create a directory called “Skrivebord”, which leaves me with TWO directories of the same name within the same folder.

Bill Clinton’s 2004 Advice on Deciding Whom to Vote For 

I’ll be taking his advice to heart when I vote in the Democratic primary here tomorrow.

A Secret to Making Money Online 

David Heinemeier Hansson’s talk at Startup School a few days ago. Chock full of common sense, or as he describes his advice, “Not rocket surgery”.

AndroidGuys on Google’s Laissez-Faire Development Model 

Jamie Hunter, at AndroidGuys:

How can Google and the Open Handset Alliance avoid this pitfall? Easy. Form an OHA quality control board that approves software applications for the Android platform. They would be responsible for testing applications before they are released to the Android public, but unlike Apple’s process developers would voluntarily submit each individual application to the board for approval. This would give consumers peace of mind when choosing whether or not to try a particular application. If it doesn’t have the board’s seal of approval they could still download and install it catering to the open source community, while developers and publishers could use this seal as a selling point on their websites or other points of distribution.

What’s most interesting about the coming iPhone/Android rivalry is that Apple and Google are taking completely opposite approaches to the issue of openness. Still though, the first test Android-based phones have to pass is whether they’re any good technically.