TechZing

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Justin and Jason interview Tayor Norrish about his startup experiences with PrintFriendly and GovIt. Specifically, they discuss how he came up with the idea for PrintFriendly and how he found a developer, the algorithm used by PrintFriendly to parse and tag relevant content in HTML pages, how GovIt got started and why (to his regret) he declined the first two and only acquisition offers, the importance of finding a partner with complementary skills, the relative cost of various web technologies, comparing the cost of Java and Ruby developers, the importance of experience vs passion when hiring a developer, the difficulty of finding good designers and developers, Elance and ODesk, targeting a niche market vs a horizontal market, the theory of the cargo cult, using Google Optimizer for A/B and nth degree testing, starting a service based on the Farmville concept of building something and watching it grow, brainstorming a pricing strategy for Swarm and Digg’s recently announced change of strategy.

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Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s new podcasting setup, the current status of Pluggio and Justin’s overhaul of the Pluggio session management system, the need to scratch your creative itches, going on an intellectual sabbatical, why claiming to give more than a 100% effort is stupid, using mock objects for Ajax calls, eliminating coding mistakes via code generation, the importance of maintaining momentum on side projects, wrestling with SQLLite in Titanium, Justin’s frustration with TextMate, how Jason talked Guyon into working on AppIgnite, the basic concept of MashAPI, whether you can get vertigo by staring too long at a monitor, how Guyon is getting a sit/stand desk at work, BackMate – a mobile app for automatically adjusting a sit/stand desk, Jason’s vector-based Javascript graphics library, Jason’s cross-platform messaging library, web workers in HTML5, the net worth of past presidents, Inverted Totalitarianism, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, AntiWar.com, Scott Horton’s interview of Max Keiser, how iPads are selling at 200K per week, Jason’s methodology (or lack thereof) for naming podcast episodes, the power of exponential growth and why you want your numbers to get big earlier, why the No Agenda podcast is like a religion, hosting hackathons as a means of finding top-notch developers, why Justin codes better when he’s drunk, some stories about the Koz, Prolog to the rescue, Google’s new Prediction API, Jason’s idea for web-based business intelligence startup, how the government’s black budget programs are the equivalent to dark matter in the universe, the sudden disappearance of _Why the Lucky Stiff and why visual logic builders have never caught on.

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Justin and Jason discuss some technical issues of the Titanium programming model, the seductive power of the two week estimate, using CSS3 with WebKit, Titanium’s pricing model, the potential fallout of the recent Facebook disgruntlement, AppIgnite’s status and Jason’s focus on solidifying the kernel, balancing code purity with pragmatism, diversifying risk with multiple clients, when VC funding makes sense and when it doesn’t, scaling beyond early adopters, why codeless.org doesn’t get it right, getting started as a software
developer by picking a niche, the new editing technology in Google Docs, why Google Spreadsheets is slow, Justin’s love affair with his iPad, how your office chair is killing you and why bad things happen when you spit in the face of mother nature.

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Justin and Jason discuss Apple’s cloud strategy, RDBHost, the power law, whether it’s better to compete in an existing market or create a new one, why entrepreneurs need to be resilient but not obstinate, the current status of AppIgnite, the efficiency of short coding sessions, solving problems in your sleep, why Stephen Hawking thinks it’s unwise to attempt to contact alien civilizations, keeping your tests up to date, and how working on something interesting makes it easier to overcome the difficult parts.