Lessons from failing at Grinn.it.

[here] tl;dr:

1. Understand where you fit in your market
2. Focus on the problem you are solving
3. Trust your founders and hold each other accountable
4. Know thy strengths and weaknesses
5. Know when to hold'em, and know when to fold'em.

HNN trending topics

Like this, but proactive. You'd probably want a periodic search query (hourly should do it).

Piperka: Webtoon reader

Well, kind of. [here] The database aspect is certainly there, but the UI is not what I had in mind.

That said, I think I'm going to use it. Lord how I need it.

Edit, after an error occurred as I was signing up: it's written in Perl! Oooh!

Edit again: well. Point of differentiation: Piperka seems possibly to be defunct, at least as far as creation of new accounts. Interesting data mining project, though.

Patrick Freaking MacKenzie

More or less the guy I want to be, talking about how it got that way. [hnn] The tl;dr:

• Charge more money.
• Make it Web-hosted.
• Get the credit and create the buzz.
• Get good at SEO.
• Optimize everything.
• Outsource/automate/eliminate, down to five hours a week.
• Get their email and permission to contact.

Words to live by.

Gamification of tutorials

Project Euler is a mathematical programming site (HNN, article, site) that encourages discussion of solutions for mathematically themed problems. Your challenge: do that for other domains of knowledge. CSS design? Javascript? Physics?

There's a real market for education. I don't know how to monetize this, but it could be popular.

Thoughts on competition

Nice little article on competition and ways to consider it that won't crush your ego.