Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

catonmat.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 106 posts

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#41

Post by kordless »

pkrumins wrote: post #39
blueberry wrote: post #11

Looks really impressive, congrats. I don't really see why it is called VM though, did you actually implement an emulator? How does this differ from online remote desktop solutions (say logmein)? Also if you want to reach beyond the geek community you might want to focus on a few of the ideas instead of the many ones that you currently have. For example, making the screencast great or making the demo of an application…

Hey, thanks. We didn't implement an emulator but since we're bringing virtual machines to the web, we decided to add 'VM' to our title to give an idea that this is related to virtual machines. Addressing your other questions, sure, we won't have like 100 features where we get lost ourselves. We'll have a small set of standard features and we'll have an API that will let developers hack on stackvm and make it do all o…

If it helps with anything you are doing, I wrote a quick and dirty project to launch EC2 instances for people to demo software during a class.

http://code.google.com/p/fabulatr/

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#42

Post by kordless »

flyosity wrote: post #40

FWIW I think saying "doing a startup" sounds pretty childish. Why not say that you're starting a company? "Doing a startup" sounds like you're just messing around with a concept, testing the waters. "Starting a company" makes you look more serious, like you know what you're doing. Just my opinion.

I think there is a certain sense of excitement and anticipation in the term. This is a new beginning and a start of a new life for these guys.

Frankly, I could care less how they reference what they are doing, or whether or not they put .ly on the end of their name! As long as they are doing something relevant and are having a good time doing it, more power to them.

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#43

Post by SnowLprd »

blueberry wrote: post #28
substack wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow I had no idea! StackVM is all html and javascript and we've taken great care to make sure it works on all browsers without any silly plugins.

you might want to rethink about plugins depending on your expected audience. People who are looking for good remote desktop solutions would be OK with installing plugins. I played the game on the front page on spoon.net and there was very little lag, it was a smooth experience. People who use remote desktop would prefer smooth experience over ease of installation.

Completely disagree with this idea. If you can avoid browser plugins without major issue, and it seems you have been successful at that so far, by all means continue to do so. Not only will the technorati appreciate not having to install yet another piece of (usually unnecessary) software, but corporate customers will be more inclined to deploy in their environments if it means there won't be another piece of software for them to install and maintain across their entire enterprise.

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#44

Post by pkrumins »

johkra wrote: post #38
tomstuart wrote: post #36

Brilliant. I'm so disappointed you didn't open the XP VM inside XP's Chrome!

That's exactly what I was wondering after he opened the terminal inside XP: What happens when you open a VM inside a VM?

I tried it out, but forgot to do it in the demo.

You get an awesome feedback/recursion effect!

I'll try to do a video about it in a few hours and post it here. :D

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#45

Post by mitjak »

pkrumins wrote: post #39
blueberry wrote: post #11

Looks really impressive, congrats. I don't really see why it is called VM though, did you actually implement an emulator? How does this differ from online remote desktop solutions (say logmein)? Also if you want to reach beyond the geek community you might want to focus on a few of the ideas instead of the many ones that you currently have. For example, making the screencast great or making the demo of an application…

Hey, thanks. We didn't implement an emulator but since we're bringing virtual machines to the web, we decided to add 'VM' to our title to give an idea that this is related to virtual machines. Addressing your other questions, sure, we won't have like 100 features where we get lost ourselves. We'll have a small set of standard features and we'll have an API that will let developers hack on stackvm and make it do all o…

I think it's actually the name that plaguing you at this point: it suggests that you're going to present another VM or, perhaps, something EC2 like.

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#46

Post by [deleted] »

pkrumins wrote: post #15
nailer wrote: post #8

Nice. I'd suggest demoing Windows XP before the Linux OS - not only is it more widely recognizable but there may be more users who have old desktop XP (or 98, etc) apps that could use your software.

Thanks for the suggestion. Well, can't change this video anymore but I'll note that for future videos we'll be making!

[deleted]

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#47

Post by nollidge »

barrkel wrote: post #37

I wouldn't be so positive about open-source everywhere. I'd recommend keeping some amount of the server-side closed source. The risk I see is that competitors can simply use your code and run the cheapest hardware they can find, while you have to run the cheapest hardware you can find and maintain and improve the software. Unless you have a different edge on the hardware side, you have no sustainable competitive adva…

Surely they've already thought of this.

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#48

Post by pbhjpbhj »

pkrumins wrote: post #26
aquark wrote: post #25

This looks great! Any comments on how feasible Windows VMs will be to offer from a licensing perspective? Best of luck with this.

We haven't really looked yet into licensing stuff. We'll do that quite later when we get ready to start offering the service. For now we're just building the stuff up and not thinking too much about anything else.

That strikes me as dangerous - if MS Windows licenses then rule out what you're wanting to do you're up the creek without a paddle (perhaps you'll still ahve a spoon to paddle with, same system but only OSS VMs). If the licenses can be worked around then you're better building that I'd have thought.
Post reply on HN