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Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

jasonlbaptiste.com

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Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#21

Post by oozcitak »

listic wrote: post #16
oozcitak wrote: post #13

Also worth considering: Build what is possible today in US but not in Europe/Asia. i.e. Watch what your fellow US entrepreneurs are working on and adopt it to your local.

Can you elaborate please? Do you advise this from the perspective of being (1) in US or (2) in Europe/Asia? It doesn't make sense either way, and people from other places might feel excluded anyway.

From a European/Asian perspective. Example: Barcode scanner/price comparer iPhone app. Although we have many local price comparison services; there is no such app to read (most of) the barcodes where I live.

    > people from other places might feel excluded anyway.
I apologize for narrowing this down to Europe/Asia, this should apply everywhere at least a couple months behind US in adopting technology.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#22

Post by fookyong »

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #20
fookyong wrote: post #19

Off topic, but I absolutely cannot stand the way that this site renders and behaves on an iPad. What's wrong with it? It wobbles all over the place and the text looks non-native and jagged. Sort it out, Baptiste!

yikes, not good. it's being done through PadPressed.com , app we released last week. Just put out a new version and it's using a new cached plugin. Can you please email me a screenshot: j@jasonlbaptiste.com Thanks!

I'm assuming you have an ipad. The problem occurs in landscape mode. Try scrolling and you'll see what I mean.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#23

Post by jasonlbaptiste »

fookyong wrote: post #22
jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yikes, not good. it's being done through PadPressed.com , app we released last week. Just put out a new version and it's using a new cached plugin. Can you please email me a screenshot: j@jasonlbaptiste.com Thanks!

I'm assuming you have an ipad. The problem occurs in landscape mode. Try scrolling and you'll see what I mean.

Correct. Looking at it now and it looks okay and doesn't wobble. Weird.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#24

Post by jakevoytko »

To accomplish this, it helps to keep a list of important problems that haven't been solved yet. As you hear about incremental improvements, it may suddenly be within reach, when popular knowledge says otherwise. Online video was obviously going to be a killer app: one Victoria's Secret Live fashion show brought the Internet to its knees several years before Youtube existed. There just wasn't a way to do it well before the cards fell into place: Flash video cut through the Gordian Knot of browser video plugins, and low-cost server infrastructures finally became cheap enough to store petabytes of video. The casual observer may miss the events, and many may jump in too early, but it helps to know what problems need to be solved.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#25

Post by fookyong »

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #23
fookyong wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming you have an ipad. The problem occurs in landscape mode. Try scrolling and you'll see what I mean.

Correct. Looking at it now and it looks okay and doesn't wobble. Weird.

Here's how to replicate it on my iPad at least

In landscape mode, put your thumb on the screen and hold it there. Then move it slightly to the left and stop. The page continued shifting despite the fact that I'm not dragging anymore and eventually it just shunts itself off the screen entirely.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#26

Post by user24 »

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #12
user24 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web was still pretty grown up in 2001 - admittedly no facebook or twitter; the idea of immediate spread of information through non-traditional routes was not widespread. I checked cnn and bbc news for information (both of which went down several times that day I might add) But I really doubt twitter would stay up if a 9/11-scale event happened today. Even facebook I'm not sure about. If the CNN site couldn't hand…

SMS was certainly there, but nowhere near the usage that it has today.

Hmm, apparently the UK were 4 years ahead of the US in terms of SMS adoption (source: http://www.intomobile.com/2007/07/23/americans-are-4-years-b...) so maybe you're right. Certainly felt to me like SMS was well established in the UK in the 2000s.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#27

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

From "You and Your Research" by Richard Hamming (discussed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=229067) :

    Most great scientists know many important problems.
    They have something between 10 and 20 important
    problems for which they are looking for an attack.
    And when they see a new idea come up, one hears them
    say "Well that bears on this problem." They drop all
    the other things and get after it.

    ...

    The great scientists, when an opportunity opens up,
    get after it and they pursue it. They drop all other
    things. They get rid of other things and they get
    after an idea because they had already thought the
    thing through. Their minds are prepared; they see
    the opportunity and they go after it. Now of course
    lots of times it doesn't work out, but you don't have
    to hit many of them to do some great science. It's
    kind of easy. One of the chief tricks is to live a
    long time!

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#28

Post by dagw »

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #4
jodrellblank wrote: post #2

I like the headline idea, but still wonder when you say: : If 9/11 happened in 2010, how much different would it have been? It took forever to know what was going on as the channels of TV and Radio weren’t fast enough. The web wasn’t ubiquitous and the ability to publish as fast as today was not there I was watching it on TV and hanging around on the Ars Technica forum, but I can't really imagine my life would have b…

Well a few things: * The tragedy would have been the same. By no means (and i don't think you are implying that I am either) saying tech today would have prevented it. * The zero delay of information flow would have made things a lot less hectic for everyone. At the time the towers fell there was a massive panic of finding where everyone was and if they were okay. I could imagine a popular hashtag emerging such as: #…

It wasn't possible to broadcast to all of your friends in a matter of seconds if you were okay in 2001.

I think you're vastly overestimating the true popularity of twitter. If I where to tweet #imokay very few would see it, and those who did would have no idea how to contact my family to let them know that I was in fact OK. If I told many of my friends to "tweet the hashtag #imokay" they'd just look at me and only be vaguely aware of what I was talking about. Even in 2010 the best and quickest way for most people to let people know that they are OK is to make a phone call.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#29

Post by jasonlbaptiste »

dagw wrote: post #28
jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a few things: * The tragedy would have been the same. By no means (and i don't think you are implying that I am either) saying tech today would have prevented it. * The zero delay of information flow would have made things a lot less hectic for everyone. At the time the towers fell there was a massive panic of finding where everyone was and if they were okay. I could imagine a popular hashtag emerging such as: #…

It wasn't possible to broadcast to all of your friends in a matter of seconds if you were okay in 2001. I think you're vastly overestimating the true popularity of twitter. If I where to tweet #imokay very few would see it, and those who did would have no idea how to contact my family to let them know that I was in fact OK. If I told many of my friends to "tweet the hashtag #imokay" they'd just look at me and only be…

who says im talking about twitter only? I actually think it's not as vastly popular as people estimate too. In the instance of 9/11 the best way to let a large number of people know you are okay would certainly be Facebook/Twitter/etc. Phone calls would take way too long. You should obviously save that for close friends.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#30

Post by volski »

When looking at an idea it’s useful to ask yourself: “Would it have been possible to build this company 12-18 months ago?”

This reads like a list of stuff that has been possible for a lot longer than 12-18 months:

  Direct Access To Customers
  Anything as a Service
  Always Connected
  Zero Barrier Distribution
  Social Context
  Assume The Device Is Portable
  Location Aware...
I'd say dig a bit more, all this stuff was possible in Feb 09. You have the right approach, but the wrong examples.
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