Armadillo Aerospace almost wins prize

So close... Armadillo Aerospace had a couple good flights but tipped over just before touchdown and the next day caught on fire on takeoff. They were this close to winning the Level 1 prize in the Lunar Lander Challenge.


More about the Lunar Lander Challenge over here.

Friday humor

Gotta love inner-thought-humor on a sunny Friday.

• You want four million users by DECEMBER?? You have four hundred active licenses for your product currently! Nothing - and I mean NOTHING - is going to add four zeros to the end of that number in three months short of hiring Arthur Anderson to handle the bookkeeping.



• Wait... First you wanted to clone Digg... Then you wanted to "add the social aspects of Facebook to it," and NOW you want it to be Wikipedia? Where the HELL did you spend your morning? In the "Web 2.0 Company Names to Memorize" symposium sponsored by the local Linux Enthusiasts club?



• Uh... Four million active users means minimum 20,000 concurrent users at any given moment, and you want to do all of this on ONE co-located virtual server in India? On .Net and MS SQL Server? Honestly? You really, really think that's how it will go? In that case, can I punch you? Please? I mean, I only ask because you seem like the type of person who'd ponder the question and then just blurt out "Yes," and I've been dying to hit something since I pressed "1" to join your conference.

The Web! It's People!

Tim Bray always has interesting things to say - I've enjoyed the distributed discussion he's started around Erlang - but his latest piece is a direct echo from the Others Online playbook (emphasis added):

Here’s the thing: the Net’s killer app has always been other people. There are side benefits, like access to all the world’s information. But the links that matter aren’t between pages but people, and they’re strong and rich and subtle. Multiply the infinite flavors in human relationships by a thickening bundle of means-to-connect; that product is what’s new and what’s good and what’s exciting. People who are looking for the Next Big Thing are mostly looking in the wrong places. And anyway, you don’t need to look, it’ll find you.

Good tips on starting a startup

This is a very decent (but short) article on things to do and think about if you are starting to develop your own small Web-based software startup. It's from Read/Write Web and part of a larger series. If you have fifteen years of experience, you'll know this already - otherwise take a look.
How To Create a Web App