Jauder Ho

wow, crazy. tell her to contact me if she needs any development - Jason Pratt

I am trying to remain personally optimistic, but I don't believe the bottom has been reached. - Louis Landon

This is what I love about being a student and working with other students. I can do everything much cheaper. $1 mil would probably fund my current business for 2+ years easily. - Daniel Zarick

It'll get worse before it gets better. Next two quarters will be tough. - Patricia

@Louis Landon Me too. I still hope thing will get better. - Marcel Janus

Eventually, things will get better. - Patricia

how people/firms/investors respond in bad times is much more telling of their character than how they respond in good times. they're doing it because they think they can get away with it. that window will close. - Bryce Roberts

Look, things are really bad and getting worse. They will eventually get better as Patricia says, but it will be hard for very many people. No one is really insulated, but there's no point in panicking or worrying about what you can't fix. However, we all should try to understand WTF happened and learn from it. I just shared a speech today by Charlie McCreevy of the European Commission in my timeline that everyone should read. It's simple and clear. - IRWebReport.com

better worse better worse better worse better worse better worse ... been going on forever, every up has a down ... why complain about the inevitable? - Gregory Lent

I don't doubt that VCs are having a tough time, but Intel Capital wanting to lower the valuation to $1 doesn't mean Intel Capital is having a tough time. It means some of the previous investors who participated in the rounds leading to the $5 mil are no longer putting in more money, and Intel wants to squeeze them out. They don't want to carry nonperforming investors. Those other VCs might be shutting down, I guess. - Denton Gentry

You kinda get the feeling that the 'world' is on hold until someone, anyone, suggests a REAL solution. Crazy stuff - Charlie Anzman

I have to say I agree with Denton. Value of a company is still consistent with the market. At the end, you're only worth what somebody's willing to pay. - Patricia

I also agree what Denton and Patricia have said. - imabonehead

I recently had one of those 'holy shit' idea moments, and I am wondering if I'll even be able to get seed capital. - Michael R. Bernstein

In many ways this is just a sign of a smart VC is it not? I'm hearing that most VCs are going to be lowballing valuations in 2009, using the economy as the 'excuse'. Extend your runway if you can and wait until the funding environment isn't as unbalanced. - AJ Kohn

I can understand if the lowered value was just 1M but from 5 to 1? That's gotta suck - Canada's Web Shop

Well the other thing is that VC isn't always the ideal expansion route. Everybody gets excited about, because it can be useful and it can be the right thing - but as somebody mentored by quite a few successful serial entrepreneurs, and a few VC, everybody says the same: don't do it unless you have to. The barrier of entry and costs of web business are so low. I went three years self funding, then started to look at financing options which I didn't end up needing. In a nutshell, it's not the only way to skin the cat in financing a startup. - Patricia

AJ, if I invested in a startup now, I would invest much less than a year ago. I think the risk in the economy is enough of a reason to give a lower valuation, since there is higher risk you won't get your money back. - Chris White

@Chris: Absolutely. I'm not saying there's not a real risk. The risk/reward ratio is steeper in this environment. But VCs are going to over-correct IMO, both to protect against risk and maximize reward. - AJ Kohn

As someone working on his own startup right now I can say categorically that if you are looking to raise VC money you are nuts. There IS NO potential for massive growth right now... there is no expendable income in the economy. Bootstrap - find partners and customers... sell what you can and try and survive. That is all. - Brian Roy

Another data point here is that very serious suitors of Genalyte, the company I work for, pulled back. We're now in survival mode, but that's not to say we aren't able to get some interest from some of the bigger players. My industry is biotech, and although the sector is down like everything else, we've not have a industry-specific bubble and crash yet. I think there's tremendous potential for growth in our sector for technologies that present significant cost savings over competitors. - Mr. Gunn

As CEO of a startup, I gave up on Venture Capital in September. Anyone paying attention could see the signs of slowing investment since the spring. But September slammed the door. What worries me now, though, isn't the VC markets. What worries me is the credit card market. AMEX is slashing credit limits, which will hurt small businesses and slow innovation far more than any VC slowdown. Real innovation happens on the back of credit, until a case can be made to risk-averse VCs that there's a real business opportunity. When credit is gone, our economy is like an engine running without any oil. - Chris Kenton via twhirl

So a good time for the super rich to help small businesses then ;o) - Rob Sellen

The first question you have to ask yourself is - can I do this and generate profit (or at minimum be revenue neutral)? If not you've got big problems. You have to do whatever you need to do to get to profit... NOW. - Brian Roy

This was pretty enjoyable. - Tad, TV's Patrick Duffy

samanfar, wow - clarke thomas

My name is Smacker, OKAY! - Andrew Trinh

This is very cool. - Michael W. May

I like Andy/ Susan. - Steve Craft

I do, I'd say Twitter probably has the best shot right now. FF is still over the head of too many, they dont know (and dont want to know) about rss - sean percival

I really hope with the continuous feature additions and improvements to FriendFeed, it would soon have a universal appeal. There are so many Nay-sayers but I'm behind them 220%. :) As for Twitter - I don't really use it anyway, so it doesn't make a difference. Although I would LOL if they were to start charging monthly fees. ie: Threaded replies are only for premium accounts haha - Mona N.

This weekend I excitedly told an engineer-friend (hydrologist) about meeting the "inventor of RSS" last week. And he said "what's that?" -- Bastard. - Brian Hendrickson

I'm with friendfeed. And yes, it should go mainstream ASAP. Many just want to go to friendfeed because "nobody else but you are on there, I know". So that is the real problem. - Ryo

Twitter will go mainstream as people always want to be noticed. Friendfeed has a harder road because it is not about the user, it is about the information. If Friendfeed goes mainstream, it will be in a much different way, like a major research or news tool. - Rob Diana

FF will go mainstream as soon as people realize that it's *not* about the information, it's about the conversation. Twitter in its current form is a megaphone broadcasting system a la FB status updates, without a realistic and understandable method of replying. FF on the other hand not only let's you share information, but creates a method to *discuss* it. It's biggest obstacle for going mainstream is the UI. - Stupid Ninja (aka Tina)

Tina, I mostly agree about the conversation, but the conversation is typically based on the information at this point. I think the amount of information that passes through will be too much for most people until better filters are in place. I admit, I tend to be very pessimistic when it comes to growth and mainstream adoption of most tech. - Rob Diana

I am all for both apps hitting mainstream fast. Both serve excellent online communication needs. Twitter provides broadcasts and quick short replies; whereas FriendFeed provides the ability to share information and generate conversation / feedback regarding that info., which can blossom into an entire community around that topic. Twitter's challenge is stability, scalability and UI. FriendFeed's challenge is search, organization and UI. - Susan Beebe (Santa Claus)

Rob, I can only base statements on my experience of course, and they're going to be affected by who follows me. With that said, my most engaging conversations on FF have usually been around a topic tossed up as a status update/question, not a link to an external post. Also, unlike FB and TW which offer a one to one conversation model (excepting FB groups), FF automatically offers a one to many conversation model. - Stupid Ninja (aka Tina)

FriendFeed will go mainstream because it's a better medium than email for sharing links and news. I wrote in detail on this here: http://friendfeed.com/e/c2f76d... - Bruce Lewis via fftogo

couple quick comments: not everything needs to "go mainstream" to be a success, it is ok to fill a niche & some things are not products but rather features best integrated into or augmenting something else - i think friendfeed fits both these criteria (current and future) and i see that as a good thing personally... - mike "glemak" dunn

@Mike - I've been thinking this too lately. What is "a success"? Is Apple a "success". They only have about 5% of the market of computers, yet I think there is a lot more media buzz about Apple unveiling a revised macbook than there is about Dell or HP introducing a revised 1050e or whatever they call them. If you get 1% of Americans using your product, that is 3 million people. That is a lot. - Robert Felty

What is mainstream? 25% of US population? 10% of RSS/tech geeks? 1% of the world? 10% of people who would pay for this service? FF's current UX won't scale to a large population having lots of real conversations here. But it does serve a good niche (or two or three) right now. But what % of the world has/wants to have conversations like this? Mainstream would drive FF to be everything to everyone. Would we (as early adopters) still like it then? - David Lee

I have a radical idea... how about Twitter just finds a way to make some money. Mainstream is great... but completely misses the point... - Brian Roy

I am "mainstream", but I've been on FF for a year as of tomorrow. - Anne Bouey

Has anyone else noticed the push the major media give to some services and not others? How often did Television Programming (news, sitcoms, talk shows) talk about "googling" something; did you ever hear them talk about "yahooing" or "asking" anything? Then it was myspace, myspace, myspace followed by Facebook. Makes me wonder if those who own the media heavily invest and then push their investments. - Internet Strategist

Internet Strategist: media people just want to be cool. It's easy to understand why they push certain stuff. I do the same. I have no investments in anything. - Robert Scoble

Will Twitter and FriendFeed become mere commodities, fed to the masses by media moguls, to sell their product ? Because that is their job. I think Twitter is becoming more mainstream, more noticed and talked about - but not generally understood. How would it be affected by advertising and ten times the traffic? FF will take longer to catch on, even though it is better. Twitter plants seeds that can be grown in FriendFeed. - Chris Loft

frankly i don't think Joe the Plumber is really that interested in such a mass of content/dialogue, Facebook is about as much feed as an average person can handle. FF/Twitter are downright manic for them and they don't have/don't want the mental faculty to deal with the multiple perpetual conversations/topics - it creates more anxiety than fun and if it's not fun it's toast. Neither will get double digit % of the population using them - Bob

OTOH, is text messaging considered mainstream yet in the U.S.? (I realize we lag way behind the rest of the world in this.) I don't think the "mainstream" can handle more than one technological breakthrough at a time :) I still know people who are even just getting used to using a computer. - Victor Ganata

@Bob I think Twitter is so powerful that it can be used for many different purposes. Imagine a multi-dimensional Twitter with single or more refined services. For local councils, government, media companies, business services, geeks, gossip, etc. Each with their own customised Twitter serving their needs. This is where Twitter will produce an income stream; hiving itself off into customized services, without the noise. - Chris Loft

i dont think it is a "we dont want it to go mainsteam" it is more of a "the technology isnt quite ready for it to go mainsteam, we couldnt handle all our friends and family and colleagues nattering on our feeds, we can barely handle the information flow at the moment". We need better filtering, a better way to have several spheres in parallel on these services. - Joelle Nebbe

(translating my previous comment in pragmatic speech:) I am happy to have all that crowd happily segragated on facebook sending each other quizzes, i dont want them coming on my FF and twitter. I love them to bits but they are, well, embarrassing! I don't want "what peanut character are you" on my friendfeed, and it will come with the mainstream - Joelle Nebbe

hmmm, this bubbled up so I re-read it. man, that was a great old post - Sarah Perez

By old you mean 9 weeks, right Sarah? :-) - Louis Gray

It's actually slightly misleading as it just does a site:sfgate.com on Google. When I first saw it I thought that it would send you to their site using OpenSearch or something. Searching Google is probably better though since most sites don't have good search of their own. - Paul Buchheit

Many big sites have a search box like this one. http://skitch.com/zest/7w88/ro... - Larry Hudson

Judging by http://googleblog.blogspot.com... it's "when [Google] detect[s] a high probability that a user wants more refined search results within a specific site. Like the rest of [Google's] snippets, the sites that display the site search box are chosen algorithmically based on metrics that measure how useful the search box is to users." Not that that explains much of the how. - Scott from Canada

google is sure getting clutter and featureitis - i dont want all these gimmicks i just want a good efficient search. Not getting it anymore. - Joelle Nebbe

I knew something wasn't right... I thought it was my browser... (not at home now) - Jorge Blanco

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r... - Paul via twhirl

Thanks, Paul! I knew there was something out there, but couldn't find it . . . 8-{ - LJF Wolffe

I see. I thought it was just me. Paul's link made it clear. Thanks! (I'm really having difficulty calling someone "Paul" as that is also my name... :) - Paul Sarcia

Not usually but lately I've found that I feel more like an adult - Kunoichi Lindsey-san

I can no longer do whatever I want, whenever I want. I have to plan ahead. Therefore, I'm an adult. - Chris Hollander

only when arguing with my mama. do you know how many times i've had to say "woman, do you realize how many years ago you gave birth to me?" - tiffany

No way. - Iain Baker

This is the first time in my life, I think, where I feel like I've dealt with things on an adult level. A lot less impulsive, more thought and planning, and more focus on my life in the future. Of course, still reading comics and wearing sneakers. - Derrick

I didn't feel I was an adult until I was 27 to 31. Now I feel like a big kid *chuckle* - Michael W. May

Sometimes. I know when I need to be serious and to take responsibility but I also know when to have a good time and just play tag! - Katie

Actually, no I don't, even though my body is telling me otherwise. - Helen Sventitsky

technically but alot of times i still feel like i am 16 - Marco (aureliusmaximus)

Yeah. I do. I can play and act like a kid when I'm free to, but most times I'm serious about what I'm doing. - Kamilah Gill

When you turn 31, you tend to feel you're arrived at adult-hood. But when you have people around you calling you "kid" you then toss out that previous thought and tell yourself "Adulthood must start at 40 then" - Terence Washington

Almost. I still watch cartoons and play video games and really hold on to that inner child, but I'm slowly getting into more and more adult situations like housing and careers and whatnot. It's a little scary. - James Ferguson

I'm 23 ! and I don't think I'm adult enough - vivavida

Most days I feel like an adult, but I still relish my 'childlike' moments. - Kyle Hebert

James, I play video games and watch cartoons, too, but I don't think that makes anyone childish. I think our generation is likely to go on playing video games until we're old and gray. It's what we grew up with. Giving that up would be like our parents giving up television or something. I do spend a lot less time playing video games than I used to, and I prefer simple ones like Katamari Damacy for relaxation over ones that take hours and hours of hard work. - Kamilah Gill

So, I guess this raises the question of what you consider to be an adult, right? For me, it's about planning my life, thinking about the future more pragmatically, not looking to others (read: my parents) to solve my problems, and doing what I want because I'm a grown-ass man, dog. - Jason Toney

Ditto what Jason Toney said (both comments). - g. warbucks

Oooh oooh, oh, and caring much much less about what other people think. Particularly you young whipper snappers who don't know shit about shit. - Jason Toney

+5 JT. With a side order of "Get off my lawn!" </ grumpy old man> - Derrick

I agree with you too, Jason, especially the parts about doing things without relying too much on parents and caring less than I used to what people think about me. - Kamilah Gill

Being a grown up equals commitment to responsibility and growth. Otherwise, we should keep on nurturing the inner child/teenager/infant that keeps us playful, affectionate, silly and curious :) - V for Veselka

i've always been future-minded though, JT. just didn't always have the means. i don't feel like an adult because i don't feel settled or particularly responsible. maybe recognizing those limits is really what adulthood is about. FWIW, my mom is 63 and i don't think she feels like an adult yet either - tiffany

My wife tells me I act like an old man. So either she means I'm mature beyond my years or that I'm senile. - Ninjitsu Jason Huebel

I work 35 hours a week (on two jobs), take classes 15 hours a week, do homework for who knows how long. I blog on (I hope) a professional level, build websites better than most other University employees and have a business card. I work as a manager and am responsible for the work of a number of other people. I'm involved in a start-up company. I'm responsible for my own finances and pay for almost everything myself. I maintain a stock portfolio and opened up my bank account under my own name. I have a charge card. I have to think ahead to the future. Next year I have to find and pay for my own residence. I may only be 21, but I'm pretty sure I'm an adult, for better or worse. - Aram Zucker-Scharff

I only take life seriously when I have to. Otherwise, It's fun, so I guess I'm only an adult when I need to be for my own good. As I can usually judge when I need to be an adult, I guess I must be one, but there's still a big kid in there that's is always begging to come out to play. In some ways though, being an adult is easier, in that I don't have to worry about 'street cred' or peer pressure. I can dress how I darn well please, and listen to all kinds of music. If you think I'm an old fart I don't care! - Ian May

popular? ;o) - Rob Sellen

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. I can see how many likes my stuff gets... - Mattie Kenny