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What still blows my mind is how email has not changed for the last 15 years. Sure, Gmail has risen to the top with awesome UX and features such as labels and priority emails. But once something comes out to revolutionize email, that would be the day


They HAD awesome UX. The new setup for composing emails makes formatting text an incredibly arduous task.


I guess it's subjective then because I like the new compose and how I can refer to other emails/do searches in the same tab.


I'll agree with Pent that it's subjective, because I love it too. Wouldn't ever want to go back to the old one.


It had awesome UX until the google UI fascists got their hands on it and starting to over engineer the thing...


Network effects are the inhibitor. Email can't change unless everybody changes at the same time. Nobody will use a new email technology that won't communicate with their existing email partners.

The closest thing to an email revolution has been replacing email with Facebook, where users whitelist each other and use that avenue to communicate instead.


Pain point - plain and simple. Startups take note: this looks very promising


50-75% of stories on TC are one way or another originated from hacker news...


It's an attention grabber, sheesh.


No it says "I think I'm entitled to your content and so I'm going to probably be a shitty customer"


No, it says "everyone is finding a way to watch it whether it is on HBO or by pirating, so why don't you figure out how to enable everyone to watch it without infringing on copyright and make some money in the process?"


So you're anti-entitlement to very easily copyable things? Why?

To assure you I'm not trolling... take a look at this discussion before replying: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...


That really isn't a discussion. It is one CEO explaining their decision to make their products available online. Kessler has a different idea of how HBO is going to position themselves online. Why is Newell's opinion on his business model any more valid than Kessler's?

I never understood this thing about "easily copy-able" being a reason to strip a business of their distribution rights. Yes, the actual string of 1's and 0's is easy to copy. But physically making a 60 minute episode of Game of Thrones is not so easy. I think the work they have put into making their product has earned them the right to control the distribution of their product just as much as any other business. If you don't like the way HBO distributes Game of Thrones... you don't go pirate it... you go film it yourself (although I suspect that would not be allowed either).


I think right now, HBO makes more money from selling to the cable companies than they could selling directly to people. The cable companies are very good customers of them, and I think that HBO as a company is better off not taking the money of people that feel entitled to their content.

HBO Go puts the technical infrastructure in place to eliminate the cable companies as customers if this ever changes, so they have some chance of surviving the likely collapse of the cable industry


Great presentation, for anyone that hasen't checked out Drew's application to Y-Combinator, here it is:

http://sulemanali.com/blog/2010/11/29/drew-houstons-y-combin...

*On a side note, one thing (if you can) is to add a little humor/personality in your application:

Q:Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)

A:The ridiculous things people name their documents to do versioning, like "proposal v2 good revised NEW 11-15-06.doc", continue to crack me up :)


While funny, if you reveal something like that and it is something you're not supposed to know for privacy reasons (don't know if that was the case here or not; maybe it showed up in a log entry and their privacy policy indicates that this will happen), and the information becomes more public you can get yourself into trouble (like 37Signals did when they say that the 100,000,000th file on BaseCamp was a picture of a cat. (http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3076-i-heard-you-like-numbers...)


It's linked from the YC "How to Apply"[1] page.

Don't try scaring people unless you are very sure of what you are talking about.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html


I work for a document management company and we regularly see people transitioning from naming systems like:

1) Document draft

2) Document draft v2

3) Document final

4) Document final updated

5) Document final final


You are absolutely correct sir. I am (21 y/o) going to be a senior in college. I notice (among my friends/fraternity) is that not many kids post statuses too often. the main sticking point is to see new photos your friends are tagged in (imho). Facebook's height was 2-3 years ago honestly


There's a pending IPO that disagrees with you in no small way.


IPO = exit strategy


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