Author Archives: billboebel

About billboebel

Bill Boebel is founder and CEO of Pingboard.

Collaborative payment for open-source dev

There are thousands of open-source software projects that are maintained by one person, including software used by lots of companies. Take Dovecot IMAP server for example. Timo Sirainen wrote it and actively develops new features for it. Several companies pay him to develop one-off features that we care about. But Timo gets pulled in different directions depending upon who’s asking the loudest or waving the biggest check. What if Timo could use a Digg-style site to let people submit and vote on feature requests, but you vote with
dollars instead of clicks.

Benefits:
(1) Multiple companies share cost of paying for features.
(2) More companies that rely on free software start paying something
(even if its small) to those that develop it.
(3) Timo makes more money than he makes today because he can always
choose to work the features that are worth the most.
(4) Other developers might start hacking on the code if anyone can get paid to develop the features. Requires some governance.
(5) Most important features *might* rise to the top.

I heard that someone tried this and it failed, but I can’t recall the name of the company. It would be worth a look into why because this seems needed.

What am I going to do with all these startup ideas?

It seems like every few days I have a new startup idea. The ideas usually come to me from living life, questioning things that are stupid, respecting things that are awesome, and visualizing what could be. Sometimes I jot my ideas down on my iphone. Since my iphone isn’t doing a good job at creating startups on its own and coming to me for investment, I’ve decided to give my ideas away here.

Warning: Most of these ideas are bad ideas. However, if you decide take one of these ideas and work hard enough at it, you may be able to iterate from bad idea… to good idea… to great company. If you do try, please let me know. I want to be your customer and I may even be interested in investing in you.

Lollapalooza 2010

” “= You sucked; “!”= You didn’t suck; “!!”= I’m gonna buy your album; “!!!”= I’m gonna buy your cd & tshirt and tell my friends how awesome you are.

These United States
B.o.B. !!
Balkan Beat Box !!
The Walkmen !
Jukebox the Ghost
Mavis Staples
My Dear Disco
The Big Pink
Devo !
Matt & Kim !!!
Neon Trees
The Black Keys
Jimmy Cliff !!
Lady Gaga ?
The Strokes !!!
The Morning Benders !!
The Soft Pack !
Harlem !!
Warpaint
Stars !!
The XX !
Gogol Bordello !!
Grizzly Bear !
Metric !!
Spoon !!
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros !!!
Slightly Stoopid
Green Day !
Phoenix !!!
Health
Miniature Tigers !
The Antlers !
The Dodos !!
Blitzen Trapper !
The Cribs !! (is this Weezer II?)
Freelance Whales !!!
Mumford & Sons
Yeasayer !!
Frightened Rabbit !
MGMT !!
The National
Arcade Fire !!!

SXSW 2010

” “= You sucked; “!”= You didn’t suck; “!!”= I’m gonna buy your album; “!!!”= I’m gonna buy your cd & tshirt and tell my friends how awesome you are.

Blair !
Harlem !!
The Strange Boys !
Man or Astro-man?
Choir of Young Believers
Here we go magic !
Fanfarlo !!!
Bowerbirds
Bear in Heaven !
Delorean
Sondre Lerche
Warpaint
Slow Club !
The Morning Benders !
Cymbals Eat Guitars !
VV Brown !!
Local Natives !!
Camper Van Beetoven !
Shout Out Out Out Out !!
The Very Best
Avi Buffalo !
The Death Set
YACHT !
Rogue Wave !!
Band of Skulls !
Family of the Year !
Royal Bangs !
Born Ruffians !!
WhoMadeWho
Theophilus London !!
The Middle East !!!
Athelete !
The Constellations !
Brazos !
Oh No Ono
Yellowfever !!
Small Black
The Sandwitches !
The Drums !!
Woods !!
Real Estate !

I’m running Google Chrome OS

I installed Google’s Chrome operating system on my laptop (Dell Latitude D420).  In fact, I am writing this blog post from Chrome OS.  Pretty cool, huh?

To install, I downloaded the source code and followed the build instructions on the Chromium website.

Here are a few problems I hit, and the resolution:

  • I couldn’t login at first because it wants to validate my Google account credentials against the Google server, however my wireless wasn’t working initially.  So to fix I followed the optional steps listed in the build instructions to “Enable a local user account” and “Set the shared user password”.  Now I can login with the local user account I created, and I can run sudo commands.
  • Wireless wasn’t running.  In a terminal (ctrl-alt-t) I saw this error in the dmesg output:
    iwl3945: iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode firmware file req failed: Reason -2
    iwl3945: Could not read microcode: -2So I copied these driver files from my laptop’s Ubuntu (Karmic) install:
    /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode
    /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-3945-2.ucode

Unresolved Problems:

  • Mouse is annoyingly slow by default and changing it didn’t work until I closed the laptop lid and it went to sleep and came back.  But it loses it when I restart.
  • Closing lid makes the laptop hibernate correctly; and it comes back super fast, but then it errors and hibernates again.  Then if I hit the power button it returns and starts working normally (not a reboot).
  • Can download file attachments, but can’t directly open.  Need to manually upload to google docs
  • Have to boot from a USB drive since my laptop doesn’t have a solid state had drive 🙁
  • Booting isn’t that much faster than Ubuntu yet
  • Periodic “A server error occurred. Please contact the administrator” errors with the start menu (its a web page)

In general, this OS is very simple (just a browser) but exactly what most people need… they just don’t know it yet.  Its not reliable enough for normal use yet, but this will become my primary OS sooner than my “Desktop 2015” prediction 4 years ago.