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grg | 15 years ago | on: Artificial intelligence: Riders on a swarm

Very interesting article. The Hard AI problem is one of the new frontiers of science.

If you're interested in this topic, I highly suggest you check out the Radiolab episode on emergence.

The episode doesn't focus on AI, per se, but it does talk a lot about how many individual things (ants, fireflies, bees) are not intelligent on their own, but do appear intelligent as a collective whole.

Here's the link: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2005/02/18

grg | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: alternatives to Flippa?

Sorry it took me so long to respond; I just noticed your reply to my comment.

I like the idea of pulling data from Delicious to determine matches. It gives you a good source of social data, and it solves the "chicken and egg" problem that a site like yours would have if it weren't pulling data from somewhere like Delicious.

In the future (once you get your userbase up), you might consider pulling data from other sources, too (Hacker News, Reddit, Digg). I'm not sure how that process would work, exactly, but it's food for thought.

As far as promotion, here's a good article that I just saw this week on Hacker News:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1610540

As a general rule of thumb, find people that are already writing articles (blogs or otherwise) on subject matter similar to your site. Use Google News and Technorati.com to find these articles (maybe terms like "social news" would be a good place to start for your purposes).

Then, start talking to those authors (in the comments section of their posts, via email/twitter). Once you have a rapport with them, offer to do a guest post on their site, sending a pre-written article that won't take them much time to edit. If your article provides value to their reader base, then it's good for you and them.

If it were my site, I'd personally focus on promotion first, and then a streamlined UI later. One quick idea on getting a good design is 99designs.com. It's a great concept on crowdsourcing design. I promise I'm not affiliated with 99Designs in any way--I've just had good luck with using them in the past (I've had a couple of logos designed through their site, and was pleased with the value of the design combined with a low cost).

grg | 15 years ago | on: New Website Builds Minimum Viable Products for Startups

This is a great idea, and I'm likely to use it in the near future.

One potential barrier to entry for users of this site:

What's stopping ibuildmvps.com from building an MVP for someone, and then (if the idea works well) taking that idea and developing it to the next level without them?

I'm not trying to say or imply that this is the intention of ibuildmvps.com. But (in America at least), you can't copyright an idea. Therefore, any of your clients would be opening themselves up to that risk.

Perhaps you should have a page on the site saying you'd be willing to sign a non-compete contract, in order to ease that concern (which may lower the barrier to entry for your service). Even better, maybe that non-compete agreement could be part of your TOS?

Again, I really do like this idea. I just wanted to add my two cents, in an effort to help your site become even better. Best of luck with this venture!

grg | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: alternatives to Flippa?

I agree with the other comments. A simplified UI and some promotion, and the traffic should go up.

So it's a great idea for the site. On the other hand, what's different about this site vs, say, clicking on "Similar" in a Google search results page?

I'm just curious...if there's certain functionality that's better on moreofit.com, I'd personally be more likely to use your site in the future, rather than just using Google.

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