Welcome to Startupping

Startupping is a one-of-a-kind community resource created for Internet entrepreneurs by Internet entrepreneurs. It is a place to share information, ask questions, and tap into the experience of others who have built and are building web businesses. Read blog posts about startup issues, participate in our discussion forums, and view our wiki resources, including sample term sheets and a glossary. For more information about the Startupping site, see our about page.

[ Compelling idea, which I hope will become a strong resource... this stuff is certainly hard, like anything you've never done before. -k ]

Startupping - A Community for Entrepreneurs

A Bartow County couple will go before a magistrate judge today to see if they will be arrested for allegedly stalking a Kennesaw police officer by installing cameras to track neighborhood speeders.

Lee and Teresa Sipple spent $1,200 mounting three video cameras and a radar speed unit outside their home, which is at the bottom of a hill. They have said they did so in hopes of convincing neighbors to slow down to create a safe environment for their son.

The Sipples allegedly caught Kennesaw police officer Richard Perrone speeding up to 17 mph over the speed limit. Perrone alerted Bartow authorities, who in turn visited the Sipples' home to tell them Perrone intended to press charges against them for stalking.

Ah, was he speeding in response to a call? It doesn't sound like stalking to me, exactly, but it's an interesting case...

-k

Magistrate judge to decide if couple will be prosecuted for 'stalking' officer

With radiating waves, a skull and crossbones and a running person, a new ionizing radiation warning symbol is being introduced to supplement the traditional international symbol for radiation, the three cornered trefoil.

The new symbol is being launched today by the IAEA and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to help reduce needless deaths and serious injuries from accidental exposure to large radioactive sources. It will serve as a supplementary warning to the trefoil, which has no intuitive meaning and little recognition beyond those educated in its significance.

Meh. I don't like it. I guess they tested it pretty well, but even so... doesn't appeal to me.

Also, I don't like "three cornered trefoil." As opposed to a trefoil with 5 or 8 or 26 lobes? Thank you to the Department of Redundancy Department.

New Symbol Launched to Warn Public About Radiation Dangers

Late in the afternoon of Jan. 16, a SWAT team from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, backed up by officers from the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office and the local police department, along with a few drug-sniffing dogs, burst into a unmarked recording studio on a short, quiet street in an industrial neighborhood near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The officers entered with their guns drawn; the local police chief said later that they were “prepared for the worst.” They had come to serve a warrant for the arrest of the studio’s owners on the grounds that they had violated the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO, a charge often used to lock up people who make a business of selling drugs or breaking people’s arms to extort money. The officers confiscated recording equipment, cars, computers and bank statements along with more than 25,000 music CDs. Two of the three owners of the studio, Tyree Simmons, who is 28, and Donald Cannon, who is 27, were arrested and held overnight in the Fulton County jail. Eight employees, mostly interns from local colleges, were briefly detained as well.

Interesting. If nothing else, this shows me how broken the industry is. One consultant uses the word "schitzophrenic" but I think hypocritical is more accurate. They try to capitalize on the indie cred these guys have and then burn them when they get too big or too noticable.

At the same time, I think there are legitimate issues raised regarding the level of profit sharing between the DJs and the artists. If the DJ is making bank from producing a mixtape, he owes it to the artists to share down some of that.

I think this is only natural. When you have a top heavy industry with high barriers to entry and a mass-production, profit-centric business model within, coupled with dropping prices on technology that enables production, grass roots systems are going to develop. I think it's good and I certainly prefer it to the major label approach, but it needs to be equitable. There needs to be some guidance in the way it develops.

It's a complex situation.

Hip-Hop Outlaw (Industry Version) - Samantha M. Shapiro - New York Times

I was aware that boardgames were coming to Live Arcade - Carcassonne and others - but I wasn't aware they were pulling in the company that made Rise of Nations to manage The Settlers of Catan. To be perfectly honest, I was expecting to choke down a half-assed port of their Windows version. I was wrong in absolute terms.

I mention it because (as I have said in the past) gamers - by which I mean gamers of the electronic variety - would find a lot to like in these games, because they are simply well-built systems which accept time as an input and produce fun. They have a delicious logic and a competitive thrill that strategy gamers especially might find irresistible. Microsoft needs games of this type badly, because as a strategy platform their hardware simply doesn't exist. These games need a presence on the other hardware though, and fast - the Wii especially, whose novel sensing and pointing apparatus might be used to retain the appealing physical elements a digital interpretation might lack. Dice rolling, tile placement, that kind of thing.

I'm aware that admitting a deep desire to roll virtual dice makes me one of the biggest dorks ever and perhaps even a kind of dork sovereign.

Hear hear! I want to play Carcassonne on my (hopefully soon to exist) Wii!

Penny Arcade! - The Onyx Obelisk

Joel really demonstrates his qualities here... This is quite simply an awesome post.

Having worked in tech support in a variety of capacities, all of this sounds familiar and I'm gratified to see some of the stuff I did (and do) corroborated.

I take the blame, diffuse people's fury and invent clever (if I may) ways to get people to do what I know they have to do, but which they are reluctant to do out of pride, laziness or frustration.

I've made up all kinds of stories about static electricity and magnetic resonance and god knows what garbage in order to get people to do what I needed them to do. It's easy to be upset at such people for being so dense, but (and I know, coming from me, this sounds a bit strange) being infuriated by your customers doesn't make you feel better. I was happiest when treating the whole thing like a game -- Manuipulate the Human.

All of that being said, even being awesome isn't going to prevent you from getting one or two really unmanageable customers. It's good that Fog Creek seems not to have any, but I have. People for whom no answer was sufficient, and who needed to yell for their own sake. I'm going to break from what Joel would probably advise and state outright that I refuse to let people verbally abuse me over the phone. I will not be called a "fucking idiot" or "dipshit" (which has happened) and continue pretending that we're having a civil dialogue. If I'm being berated and can't get a word in, I'll hang up. This will make the customer even more angry in the short term. He'll call back even more furious, but that's good in this case because he'll be sputtering and have more trouble keeping up the pace. He'll demand to know why you hung up on him and thereby actually let you say a word or two. Of the two times I've had to hang up on a customer, one eventually apologized and ended up chagrined but pleased with the results. The other one demanded to speak to my boss, and her boss, and eventually was reined in, but was probably never happy. Then, I figure that guy was probably never happy for more than 5 minutes, regardless of the circumstances. Some people really are just broken. -k]

Seven steps to remarkable customer service - Joel on Software

This skit had me in stitches when I first watched it.

[ Agreed. This is a high water mark for SNL, i'd say. -k]

YouTube - colonel angus

Testimony from Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor, 1977-1981. Original is a PDF. Also available via Google in HTML.

I've quoted four contiguous paragraphs below. Interesting words from one of the architects of the Mujahideen resistance forces in Soviet occupied Afghanistan. When he says that "most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism," he's probably in a position to know something about the subject.

* * *

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America’s involvement in World War II.

This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi state; while Iran, though gaining in regional influence, is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Deplorably, the Administration's foreign policy in the Middle East region has lately relied almost entirely on such sloganeering. Vague and inflammatory talk about "a new strategic context" which is based on "clarity" and which prompts "the birth pangs of a new Middle East" is breeding intensifying anti-Americanism and is increasing the danger of a long-term collision between the United States and the Islamic world. Those in charge of U.S. diplomacy have also adopted a posture of moralistic self-ostracism toward Iran strongly reminiscent of John Foster Dulles's attitude of the early 1950's toward Chinese Communist leaders (resulting among other things in the well-known episode of the refused handshake). It took some two decades and a half before another Republican president was finally able to undo that legacy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's Senate Foreign Relations Committee Testimony, 2/1/2007

Japanese wrestlers versus a house. Bare hands, cage match. Man wins on a 3 count.

[This pisses me off a bit. That house looks freaking awesome... why are they destroying it? -k]

YouTube - æ–°æ—¥ãƒ¬ã‚¹ãƒ©ãƒ¼å»ƒå±‹ç ´å£Š Japanese Wrestlers V House

Val Kilmer is reportedly set to sign up to star in a sequel to his 1985 comedy "Real Genius." The "Tombstone" star recently announced his intentions to take on more comedic roles in the future in a bid to alter his Hollywood image and take his career to a new level.

It's gonna go to a new level alright... straight down.

Sorry, I mean, Real Genius is kind of a geek/nerd cult classic -- I own a copy -- but I really don't think he's gonna get much traction out of a sequel. I just can't imagine what's going to work.

Kilmer Plans Real Genius Sequel