Things I hate to spend money on

Ramit Sethi has a great list titled, “Things I hate spending money on” that gave me a good laugh. I’m in agreement on organic groceries and dry cleaning. I don’t remember the last time I’ve had article of clothing dry cleaned, although that’s probably more a statement on my wardrobe than thriftiness.

A couple more items I’d add to the list are software updates, stamps, co-pays, insurance of any kind, membership fees (Costco, Sams Club), and automotive work that includes the word, “Flushing”. I don’t know why my car needs anything “flushed” but I’m told it does whenever I take it to one of those quick lube joints.

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What is Microsoft doing with “10”?

From what I can tell it appears that Jeff Sandquist’s manager went on vacation and so he decided to gathered a bunch of buddies around and ask, “What would be a cool website we can put together for tech enthusiasts?” and 10 was born.

That probably wasn’t how this site came about, but it’s the type of project that many people would *want* to start but maybe not until the boss took a long vacation. It doesn’t seem like the kind of site you’d see from Microsoft and that’s a compliment.

It sort of reminds me of a virtual water cooler where people chill out and talk about the new gadgets and technology.
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Is “just enough Office” good enough for most people?

I agree with Jason Fried from 37 Signals that it probably is enough for most people. Google doesn’t really need to put together an exhaustive office suite because most people don’t use all the applications found in Office Pro or even the scaled down versions. I use Word, Outlook and Excel everyday. But I don’t use Powerpoint very often and I haven’t used Access in years. I’m pretty sure I could be happy using about any other word processor. But I’m hesitant to use an Excel or Outlook competitor since I know my around those two products quite well.

The other question I hear asked about product like Writely is this: Can I save documents to my machine or is everything I create stored on someone elses servers? It’s one thing to have someone host my email but it’s another thing for them to be responsible for my spreadsheets full of financial data.

How to get your company funded

Seth Godin has a great post about how to get your company funded. His short answer? “Don’t”

Most companies are not appropriate sites for VC money. That’s because they’re freelance ventures, not entrepreneurial ones. A freelance venture is one where you work to get paid. An entrepreneurial one is where you can make money while you sleep. Meaning that you work really really hard and you scale and suddenly you own real estate or media properties or technology or a system or a brand that people pay for without you actually doing any incremental work yourself.

Full article

Which company would you choose to work for?

As the influx of newly minted college grads hit the streets looking for jobs I wonder if I were in their shoes and given the chance to work for Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, eBay or Apple which company I’d chose?

Having been in the industry for a while now, I’d choose none of them and probably seek out a small but cool company like the one I work for or something along the lines of 37Signals or Automattic. But if I were just out of school I’d probably head to Yahoo because I like what they have been doing lately and their products, for the most part, are a lot more stable and mature than Google’s. Apple would be the last company I’d chose. They have a lot of hip new products, but they appear so controlling and I wouldn’t be able to blog since they don’t allow it. The right group at Microsoft could be interesting and they allow bloggers.