blakeborgeson.com - Latest Comments

Re: what i liked at techcrunch50: fitbit, grockit, goodguide, and peter thiel

Jugendherberge — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:36:27 -0000

Well i think that I’m not quite sold on using it myself yet, but they’ve made an incredible step forward in collaborative learning online. Study for the GMAT with your friends, or with any number of people you’ll meet on the site.

Re: what i liked at techcrunch50: fitbit, grockit, goodguide, and peter thiel

Hampers — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:32:19 -0000

"...Anytime you want, you get on their website and see how many calories you’ve been burning, what your activity level has been like..." This is awesome, a health check-up in a flash.

Re: confirmation bias exposed (in 1960)

Hampers — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:14:23 -0000

Life is full of surprises and experimenting with it makes one an expert in his own field. In life, understanding matters most, thus any untoward circumstances may be considered a test: of ability to accept or not.

Re: CERN regarding worries about creating black holes: don’t worry, it’s safe. we promise.

KarlPMartim — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:29:17 -0000

In the end everything in this process had eventually worked for the switzerland clothing best as far as the watches were concerned. But what really made the watch the success it is today was not some overnight miracle, it actually took being televised in an international sporting event to secure the final touches on this great watch’s reputation.

Re: finally, good statistics: have any mutual fund managers beaten the market?

mlgreen8753 — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:15:09 -0000

I don't trust mutual funds. I intend to manage my own stocks. While I don't have money in stocks yet, I am looking at Mentor Capital (MNTR) because of the breast cancer research they are funding through their 20% merger with Quantum Immunologics, a bio-tech company with a goal of marketing their immunotherapy cancer treatment upon completion of their FDA approved clinical trials.

Re: what i liked at techcrunch50: fitbit, grockit, goodguide, and peter thiel

tiberiu84 — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:24:40 -0000

Maybe it was just a one in a thousand error:)) Disqus is one of the best commenting systems that a blogger can use at the moment. I had experience with other commenting systems, but Disqus is the perfect balance which offers all I need.
_____________________________________
Sports Website

Re: ooga vs. y combinator, apple vs. google, designer vs. curator

vijayshankar gupta — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:43:05 -0000

good one

Re: confirmation bias exposed (in 1960)

tani001 — Mon, 11 May 2009 07:41:50 -0000

Humans don't like to be seen as coldhearted, so a starting point might be to point out all the people dying all over the world while you sit in the box, unable to save them. I doubt that would win the game except against an exceptionally bad gatekeeper, but it meets the other criteria so if we think along these lines perhaps we can come up with something actually persuasive.

Re: my comment on seth godin’s post “breakage”: be careful with your customers

jonathan_n — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:21:57 -0000

Thanks!

I'd looked briefly at Google's website optimizer. I'll take a look at Eric's posts, too.

I just found the blog from your profile on Hackers and Founders. Good stuff. Keep it coming.

Re: my comment on seth godin’s post “breakage”: be careful with your customers

blakeweb — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:35:56 -0000

Hey Jonathan--great to see you here!

My favorite resource for discussions about versioning so far is Eric Ries, co-founder of imvu. He's incredibly smart both technically and business-wise and just started writing a fantastic blog about 4 months ago at http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com. I imagine you've seen links to some of his posts on hacker news. He's very prolific as well. To thin it out a bit, here's a link to a tag of split-test posts he's written: http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/searc...

He talks about doing all the versioning the manual way deep within the code for the site, which is how we set it up as well. But you can use some tricks to leverage google's website optimizer if you're limited in your coding bandwidth. For example, if you've got an out-of-the-box ecommerce solution or you coded one yourself, just run some different versions of portions of your homepage that link through to duplicates of the same product, but at different prices. Then google handles all the cookies, tracking, and conversion analysis. You'll have to do some math yourself to pick the optimal price for you based on your profit margins--conversion rates is, I believe, as far as website optimizer will take you. Hope that helps!

Re: my comment on seth godin’s post “breakage”: be careful with your customers

jonathan_n — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:11:23 -0000

I'd love to read some of your ideas on how to test pricing on your customers. I really hadn't thought of it. But it absolutely makes sense. Any resources you come across in terms of price testing would be great, too.

Re: obamanomics needs a one-liner: excellent nytimes article on obama’s economics views

tiberiu84 — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:29:07 -0000

The first thing that we must think of is payroll services. We have such an abyss between the income of rich people and poor people... The distance can't be described and we should make it possible to describe...

Re: ooga vs. y combinator, apple vs. google, designer vs. curator

eve isk — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:16:11 -0000

This is just fantastic. Thank you for Great Post..........................

Re: some good web finds last week: zembly platform, startup ideas, a postmortem

blakeweb — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:18:12 -0000

Hmm...I don't, but since I haven't really done much with that account, I was
going to change the password so you could check it out. Unfortunately,
there doesn't seem to be any way in their account interface to change
passwords, and the 'lost my password' function is broken.

I haven't tested it much honestly, but it seems sweet. Something for you to
look forward to. =)

Re: some good web finds last week: zembly platform, startup ideas, a postmortem

rahmin — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 02:14:34 -0000

hey blake - nice find re: zembly. do you have any beta invites?

Re: my comment on seth godin’s post “breakage”: be careful with your customers

Dan Graham — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:33:53 -0000

I read that post yesterday as well and decided that I disagreed, in general, with his assertion that you can't treat supply and demand as a curve. I think that there are probably very few cases where you raise prices by 5% or 10% and you lose a substantial chunk of your customer base forever. Even if it were true that Seth's insurance company lost a substantial chunk of customers during that price increase, it's probably because the Insurance company jumped too far up the curve where the curve looks more exponential. That would be a result of anticipating the curve incorrectly -- and as you point out in your 'comment,' testing is a great way to help define the curve so you know what to expect with price changes.

I do think it could happen with trust more easily; with the most extreme cases being a bank that skimps on some software and ends up constantly giving all their customers' money away to someone else. Although car companies kill hundreds of people a year due to shotty design and they are still in business -- so who knows?

Re: what i liked at techcrunch50: fitbit, grockit, goodguide, and peter thiel

blakeweb — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:13:38 -0000

Sorry disqus ate your comment, and thanks for letting me know--that's something I should keep an eye out for if I can.

tonchidot: No, I definitely don't think it's really real. I mean, the video isn't fake, but yeah, I agree that it's a hacked demo in that their application isn't really ready at all. They seeded it with perfect data in a perfect scenario, so the video wasn't realistic at all. But it's coming soon, I hope.

swype: Yeah, I skipped them--I never paid attention to them at the event because I have an app on my iphone already as of a couple weeks ago that does what they're doing, called writingpad (http://www.shapewriter.com/iphone.html). So swype's technology didn't look that unique or defensible to me. I like writingpad a lot, though right now it's confined to its own little notepad application rather than subbing in for the default iphone keyboard. That's what swype is trying to change, I guess. Seems like apple and the other phone makers will just do it themselves, and hopefully have it as another option for the way the keyboard works.

Although looking at their website, it seems swype might be targeting actual computer touch screens over mobile devices. That seems like it could be really useful.

Re: what i liked at techcrunch50: fitbit, grockit, goodguide, and peter thiel

ParkerJones — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:29:16 -0000

You'd think disqus would be better about not eating comments.

The summary:

-Agree with you about goodguide. Just waiting for a mobile, barcode-reading app to frontend it.
-You get a feel for whether Tonchidot is for real? Everything I've seen has a very hacked-together-to-make-a-demo look. Plus I'm skeptical about how well this would work. In any case, I think we'd all like to see this technology improve-- the different applications are pretty exciting.
-No mention of Swype, which I think could be a game-changer for touchscreen devices. Just like T9 was for texting

Re: using a speculative market to decide our laws? (”futarchy”)

blakeweb — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 03:18:42 -0000

That's true--I think right now the idea definitely doesn't have a lot of support yet. Maybe we need an authoritarian government to bridge the gap...with me in charge. =)

Re: using a speculative market to decide our laws? (”futarchy”)

blakeweb — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 03:17:04 -0000

Good point. It actually does seem reasonably achievable to do some experimentation of this sort at the local level. Experiments with governance on a national level may have to wait until the first seasteading (seasteading.org) colony is launched. =)

Re: using a speculative market to decide our laws? (”futarchy”)

Dan Graham — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:38:45 -0000

My first thought is whether or not the futarchy proposed policy would fare well in its own system, or whether the betting market would estimate a failure...i have my opinion...

Re: using a speculative market to decide our laws? (”futarchy”)

adamheroku — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:19:16 -0000

I'm for it - the mechanisms of republican democracy are long due for an update to modern philosophy and technology. However, don't start at the national level. Let state, county, or city governments experiment first.

Re: CERN regarding worries about creating black holes: don’t worry, it’s safe. we promise.

Eric — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:32:37 -0000

I always knew a neutral country like Switzerland would negate existance

Re: CERN regarding worries about creating black holes: don’t worry, it’s safe. we promise.

freddie stewart — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:19:39 -0000

we reallly could be in deep trouble

Re: CERN regarding worries about creating black holes: don’t worry, it’s safe. we promise.

Joe Monkhouse — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 07:10:55 -0000

STOP ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIEEEEEEE