Jeff Seibert

Two weeks ago I had the honor of speaking to my highschool about...

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:08:16 -0400

Two weeks ago I had the honor of speaking to my highschool about entrepreneurship as part of an annual lecture series on business - a humbling experience given the long and successful career of the day’s other presenter (the Director of the Maryland Spine Center) and the fact that I vividly remember sitting in the audience and listening to this same annual lecture 6 years ago.

My goal was to encourage the students to seriously consider entrepreneurship as a career and hopefully give them a sense of the excitement I derive from the startup world on a daily basis.

Hope you enjoy the video (sorry it skips a few times!) and I would love feedback on what I could have done better…

Requisite thanks to the Cotton family:

The H.K. Douglas Cotton Memorial Lecture, established by Baltimore businessman Henry Kyd Douglas Cotton, annually features business and career lectures for students at Gilman School. The program was created by an endowment established by Mr. Cotton shortly before his death in 1979 and reflects Mr. Cotton’s strong belief in education and business.

Setting your $PATH on Ubuntu (everywhere!)

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:38:12 -0400

Really for my own future reference, here is a quick summary of how to set the $PATH variable everywhere on the system (for Ubuntu).

As an example, let’s say you have ruby installed in /usr/bin and REE installed in /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin and you’d like to use REE system-wide.

Your account: Add this line to your ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc file:
```
export PATH=/opt/ruby-enterprise/bin:$PATH;
```
Sudo access: Ubuntu is, ummmm, unique, in that sudo does not inherit the path of the current user “for security reasons.” However, this really isn’t that much more secure, and furthermore is particularly obnoxious. To revert this behavior, add the following to your ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc file:
```
alias sudo='sudo env PATH=$PATH'
```
System wide: For everyone else and other applications, adjust the PATH line in /etc/environment so it is prefixed with ‘/opt/ruby-enterprise/bin:’

"Firing the customers you can’t possibly please gives you the bandwidth and resources to coddle the..."

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:30:34 -0500

“Firing the customers you can’t possibly please gives you the bandwidth and resources to coddle the ones that truly deserve your attention and repay you with referrals, applause and loyalty.”

- Seth’s Blog: more, More, MORE! (via hiten)

Apart from the nonstandard button spacing, this is...

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:42:12 -0500

Apart from the nonstandard button spacing, this is brilliant.

hiten:

szymon:

I think one of the best WWF campaigns

"iPad is an incredible opportunity for developers to re-imagine every single category of desktop and..."

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:40:15 -0500

“iPad is an incredible opportunity for developers to re-imagine every single category of desktop and web software there is. Seriously, if you’re a developer and you’re not thinking about how your app could work better on the iPad and its descendants, you deserve to get left behind.”

- Joe Hewitt (via hiten)

Box.net Launches Flash-Based Universal File Viewer, Saves You Some Headaches

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:19:13 -0500

Last year, Box.net acquired a small company called Increo without giving much insight as to what they’d be doing with the technology. Today, we’re seeing the fruits of that acquisition: Box.net is launching a new integrated Flash file viewer, allowing users to immediately view over 20 file types from their browser, including most common document formats, images (including Photoshop), audio, and video.

Read full article on TechCrunch…

"Remember about, oh, a decade ago? Before 9/11? After the Battle of Seattle, when everyone was..."

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:42:51 -0500

“

Remember about, oh, a decade ago? Before 9/11? After the Battle of Seattle, when everyone was talking about multinational corporations taking over the world, about corporate states and all of that?

Yesterday, we officially tripped over this point in history.

Take a step back and consider the situation: Google is threatening to embargo a superpower, in retaliation for an espionage campaign.

”

- Public Address | OnPoint

hiten: itchycosmicpocket: softerpassions: (via...

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:03:32 -0500

hiten:

itchycosmicpocket:

softerpassions:

(via cardinalfire)

The Lottery Lady

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 04:15:32 -0500

“Take the typical state lotto. If you knew all of the variables in the machine that draws the numbers, you can solve for which numbers will land in the winning numbers area.”

Ummmm….yeah…I’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there. Most of those machines blow ping-pong balls around with air, which is most likely turbulent, and they are blown up into the slots when the lottery lady pulls the lever for the slot. Since, at a minimum, you can’t solve for the state of the lottery lady, you can’t “solve for which numbers will land in the winning numbers area.”

(Never mind the outrageous accuracy of initial conditions and precision of the calculations you’d need to solve for the movement of ~4 dozen ping-pong balls being blown around by turbulent air.)

From Slashdot comments, of course. And this doesn’t even breach the topic of Heisenberg Uncertainty…

[Re:Looking for god’s finger prints? Here it is.]

"When Evan was at Pyra Labs they ran out of money. He laid off the team (actually just stopped paying..."

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:51:01 -0500

“When Evan was at Pyra Labs they ran out of money. He laid off the team (actually just stopped paying them). Everybody hated him. He worked alone for a year in what I can imagine were far from optimal conditions. And what happened next? He sold his product (a little thing called Blogger) to a hot start-up (a little company called Google). The rest is history. And I’m pretty confident there would be no Twitter today if Evan hadn’t persevered back in the day.”

- Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up. | JonBischke.com (via hiten)

"Of course a great way to show you can build stuff is to build a prototype of the product you are..."

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:29:49 -0500

“Of course a great way to show you can build stuff is to build a prototype of the product you are raising money for. This is why so many VCs tell entrepreneurs to “come back when you have a demo.” They aren’t wondering whether your product can be built – they are wondering whether you can build it.”

- Pitch yourself, not your idea cdixon.org – chris dixon’s blog (via hiten)

hiten: giantrobotlasers: ericfriedman:mikehudack:kevintwohy: I’...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:27:46 -0400

hiten:

giantrobotlasers:

ericfriedman:mikehudack:kevintwohy:

I’ve had these pictures stuck in my head for the last few weeks. The left is a sketch Jack Dorsey made of his concept for Twitter back in 2006, and the right (if you don’t remember) is what Facebook looked like in 2005 when it was essentially a sloppy version of Friendster for students of a particular Ivy League college. When something hits such immense scale, it can be difficult to remember that it once existed as such a fleetingly simple, unmitigated idea. Some of the sharpest people the industry could muster (along with hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars) have been bought to bear to cultivate these technologies into their present forms. But those are effects, not causes.

Think about that the next time you sketch something on the back of an envelope.

View of San Francisco from the Bay Bridge. Was on the way back...

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:55:00 -0400

View of San Francisco from the Bay Bridge. Was on the way back from Napa this past weekend. (No Photoshopping… this is straight from the camera!)

Increo Solutions acquired by Box.net

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:26:32 -0400

I’m very excited to announce that Increo has been acquired by Box.net!

In talking with the Box.net team, we realized that they shared our vision for the future of documents on the Internet and, with their solid product offerings and rapidly growing userbase, were well-primed to take a leadership role in the online collaboration space.

We could not be happier to bring our technology to Box.net and can not wait to deliver easy document previewing, annotation, and embedding to Box’s customers.

TechCrunch is covering the acquisition here:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/06/box-net-acquires-increo-solutions-to-expand-document-collaboration-and-sharing/

“I spoke to Box.net CEO Aaron Levie briefly about the acquisition. He says the key reason they acquired Increo is to integrate the collaboration and annotation functionality from Backboard. Increo’s underlying technology for displaying documents on websites is also attractive to Box.net.”

And Increo’s official statement on the acquisition is here:

http://blog.increosolutions.com/2009/10/increo-solutions-acquired-by-boxnet/

"People sometimes think things like twitter just take off overnight. Nope. It took them a few years..."

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:04:10 -0400

“People sometimes think things like twitter just take off overnight. Nope. It took them a few years to get real traction. Keep at it if you are still in year 1 or 2 of your business. Give your business at least 3 years.”

- Getting More Awesome - Rishi’s Personal Blog: Reminder: Twitter was started in 2006 (via hiten)

Book Titles, If They Were Written Today

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:19:56 -0400

yourmonkeycalled:

Then: The Gospel of Matthew

Now: 40 Days and a Mule: How One Man Quit His Job and Became the Boss

"Remember that every company was once a startup. Two people and an idea. Microsoft started when Bill..."

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:32:45 -0400

“Remember that every company was once a startup. Two people and an idea. Microsoft started when Bill Gates and Paul Allen were students. Google started when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were students. Apple started with just Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak… when they were both students, but hardly in the traditional sense.”

- Adapted from Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: Rules for evaluating startups and suspending disbelief (via hiten)

Gilman School Profiles an Early Entrepreneur

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:53:46 -0400

Gilman School Profiles an Early Entrepreneur:

Very very honored to be profiled in the run-up to my 5th year reunion at Gilman School. Can’t wait to see everyone there!

“Jeff Seibert left Baltimore in 2004 with two important things besides his Gilman education: an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for computer programming and web design.

As he leaves California for Boston in 2009, he still has all of those things, not to mention a Stanford degree. Plus, he’s got something else.”

Installing PHP 5.2.10 on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:01:00 -0400

Apple deserves serious props for bringing the installed version of PHP up to 5.3 on Snow Leopard, but some projects *cough CakePHP* can’t yet handle the goodness.

Sure, you could virtualize Ubuntu running whatever setup you desired, but if you already had a local setup on Leopard, it might make more sense to downgrade to PHP 5.2 and get back to work.

There’s a lot of confusion and little documentation online about how this is done, so here is the easiest way to make it happen:

Install the “Snow Leopard” version of MacPorts from: http://www.macports.org/install.php

In Terminal, run:

> sudo port -v selfupdate
> sudo port -f uninstall installed
> sudo port install php52 +mysql5 +sqlite
> sudo cp /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini-dist /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini

Open /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and change line 114 from:

LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

to:

LoadModule php5_module        /opt/local/apache2/modules/libphp5.so

Open /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini and change line 761 from:

mysql.default_socket =

to:

mysql.default_socket = /var/mysql/mysql.sock

Use the Sharing pane of System Preferences to stop and start Web Sharing

Purists will argue that you now have lots of extra software installed on your system, which is true, but let’s be real: these 5 steps are the fastest way to get back to being productive.

Update (March 30, 2010): If you are seeing weird errors with curl and SSL/https connections, it’s because the version of libcurl that this install is NOT compatible. Here’s how to fix it:

> sudo mv /opt/local/lib/libcurl.4.dylib /opt/local/lib/libcurl.4.dylib.old
> sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libcurl.4.dylib /opt/local/lib/libcurl.4.dylib

> sudo mv /opt/local/lib/libcurl.dylib /opt/local/lib/libcurl.dylib.old
> sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libcurl.dylib /opt/local/lib/libcurl.dylib

Enjoy!

Check out the pre-show for our presentation at Pokin’...

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:39:20 -0400

Check out the pre-show for our presentation at Pokin’ Holes in Boston this Thursday, September 3.

The show will be filmed live at 7pm at Vintage Lounge in the financial district - don’t be late!