Disqus - Latest Comments for JonathanDeamer

Re: MelloMello: “We need to mobilise fast”

Jonathan Deamer — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 15:05:41 -0000

It'd be really sad if Mello Mello were to close - it's a great place. People interested in its plight may be interested in the council's guidelines for the business rates relief available to non-profits like MM: http://liverpool.gov.uk/Ima...

I guess these were the criteria Rob was talking about? If so, there are loads of ways the venue goes above and beyond the needs of these criteria, but I wonder if this was a sticking point: "The balance between sporting and social activities will be an important factor– the existence of a bar or catering facilities should not in themselves preclude the granting of relief but must not exceed 50% of total income".

Either way, the final criterion, "The financial impact on the City Council given that agreed budgets cannot be exceeded", does unfortunately seem to give them carte blanche to do what they like.

Re: Content Shifting

Jonathan Deamer — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 07:29:00 -0000

I second the awesomeness of Huffduffer. There are interesting social discovery elements to it, but just being able to get random MP3s I find about the web to appear in my podcatcher to "listen later" is so useful.

Re: http://ashotofjd.com/post/1173358256

Jonathan Deamer — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 16:18:09 -0000

I thought exactly the same...

Re: http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/613048529

Jonathan Deamer — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:26:08 -0000

Good point - but the main nostalgia it gave me was for the days when I used to create interfaces like this, thinking I wanted a career as a software developer ;-)

Re: Vaporware

Jonathan Deamer — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:18:37 -0000

Was meant to be January this year. I've got a soft spot for YC companies too, and I've still got high hopes for Wake Mate. I love the concept, and the similar Sleep Cycle iPhone app is a fave of mine.

I empathise with the difficulties of making something (especially hardware) from scratch to a perfect schedule. I can just imagine some of the people who pre-ordered are slightly annoyed, but I think WM treated them pretty well if memory serves - like you say, the right thing to do to avoid being forever branded as vapourware!

Re: Vaporware

Jonathan Deamer — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:18:12 -0000

(Sorry, meant to add this as a reply)!

Re: Vaporware

Jonathan Deamer — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:04:46 -0000

I was quite excited by Y Combinator startup Wake Mate initially, but the delay in shipping their hardware has made me less so. I don't blame the company for this - no-one wants to release (or buy!) a product before it's ready - but I do think it damages their potential for success (in terms of reputation/PR impact if nothing else).

Re: Doing, not talking

Jonathan Deamer — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:48:25 -0000

:-) http://xkcd.com/125/

Re: My trouble with eBay

Jonathan Deamer — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 08:44:52 -0000

I've not found one so far, but I think a solution in future could be things like the existing Facebook Markets, which are restricted (or targeted) to your social graph and geographic area.

A lot of the problems I've faced recently are through helping my girlfriend buy and sell bulky vintage furniture via eBay - it's generally easier to have this set to "local pickup only", which obviously isn't the optimum way to sell via eBay, so something more regional seems to be the way forward...

Can't offer any solutions for your immediate issues though! ;-)

Re: My trouble with eBay

Jonathan Deamer — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:49:21 -0000

Exactly the same experience. eBay has become something it was never meant to be - it started as a place for hard-to-find or potentially high-value goods, but has become simply "Craigslist with a payment system". This results in the sort of endless requests you're talking about.

One of the key benefits of an online auction system is that it should automate much of the hard work of selling and minimise necessary communication, but because the way people use eBay has changed (perhaps as it's become more mainstream) the communication has crept back in.

Re: Booyah starts dabbling in location-sensitive virtual goods

Jonathan Deamer — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:05:18 -0000

Great to see some people other than "the big 2" in location-based services getting a shout-out, especially fellow UK startup Rummble.

While people often talk about who be be the overall winner in this space, I don't think it's a zero-sum game where we'll see, say, Foursquare becoming the only location-based service worth using. There are enough orthogonals that it's likely there will be different networks for different purposes - one might be a loyalty card for the places you visit most, one might be to see where your friends are, another to get recommendations and another for location-based virtual goods.

It's still early days!

Re: Think it all happens in Silicon Valley? You’re wrong! With Songkick.com.

Jonathan Deamer — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:30:46 -0000

I've long enjoyed the pleasant surprise when I find out a cool new company is UK-based, and more and more recently I've begun to stumble across companies based around Old Street, so I look forward to a few more pleasant surprises as part of this series ;-)

Re: http://jhnbrssndn.tumblr.com/post/389702220

Jonathan Deamer — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:29:43 -0000

Extra points for apostrophe fail too.

Re: Some Interesting Facts About Chatroulette

Jonathan Deamer — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:44:01 -0000

He definitely sounds like a smart and interesting young guy. Presumably wanting to meet him is based on a principle of "investing in people, not ideas" though? Sounds like he could go on to great things, so of course he's someone worth knowing, but Chatroulette doesn't immediately strike me as an investable proposition as it stands.

Re: Startups Are Not Zero-Sum

Jonathan Deamer — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:19:42 -0000

This is a phenomenon that seems oddly unique to the tech press. Not a week goes by without some new device being claimed "an iPhone killer"...but new cars come out every week, and how often do you read about a new type of car being "a BMW killer"?

Re: A shot of JD - What are they? Shoe-trousers or trouser-shoes? ...

Jonathan Deamer — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:54:20 -0000

No idea, sorry, just found the pic online and thought it was cool!

Re: Hot UK start-ups join Digital Mission to Texas

Jonathan Deamer — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:14:43 -0000

I thought it was great that there was such a diverse range of companies - agencies, consumer startups and B2B - but really innovative, early stage stuff didn't get left out, as is sometimes the case. If it was *all* established folks like Moonfruit or just agencies it might be a bit odd, but it's cool to have some old hands alongside the young'uns ;-)

Re: The most popular Tumblr blogs

Jonathan Deamer — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:42:29 -0000

Good point, Kevin - may well be that a hell of a lot of the views of her content (and consequently, click-throughs to yours) take place on the Tumblr dashboard, and so won't affect the compete stats.

Further, a proper statistician would probably be able to make some interesting conclusions about the sort of blogs people follow via Tumblr vs. the sort that receive lots of traffic from the wider web...I'm not sure these would be one and the same.

Re: Yet Another Reason I Love My Wife

Jonathan Deamer — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:13:33 -0000

Respect for doing that too...I'm a big believer in "lifelong learning", but so many people seem to look down on evening classes and similar as somehow not being "real" education.

Re: Working At Startups

Jonathan Deamer — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:50:13 -0000

Nice one Albert, look forward to reading it if you get chance in the
new year...happy holidays!

Re: Working At Startups

Jonathan Deamer — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:21:02 -0000

Would love to read a post summarising your talk - education and careers advice does focus too much on going to work for large companies.

In particular, when I was in college it would have been useful to hear the pros/cons of starting up on your own vs. joining someone else's startup.

Re: Gravity Sling shows how virtual goods sales work on the iPhone

Jonathan Deamer — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:43:43 -0000

Fascinating reading, especially the stats about Openfeint. I'm interested to see whether Chillingo's similar Crystal SDK has a similar effect.

Also of interest might be some similar findings in a report I was involved in producing recently for Northwest Vision and Media http://www.scribd.com/doc/2...

Re: Chris Hughes

Jonathan Deamer — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:10:18 -0000

Once you've read the book, you'll realise why this is ;-) Free is only *part* of a business model, not *all* of it...give some stuff away for free (eg. web/audio versions), monetise others (eg. dead tree version).

Re: A shot of JD - “40 years of Sesame Street” Google doodle. This...

Jonathan Deamer — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:13:53 -0000

I've heard word from tha Schmidt to that effect too...I just wonder whether it can be taken as gospel?

Wow, hope the Aardman servers were prepared ;-) Busy day for the sysadmin there!

Re: A shot of JD - Amazing footer

Jonathan Deamer — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:45:37 -0000

Or, as I had to the other day, using your Dad's netbook. Which, interestingly (or horrifically) also runs Office '97. He has a Windows phone too.