Disqus - Latest Comments for Devolver

Re: VentureBeat is looking for a Director of Sales

Devolver — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:54:27 -0000

That makes three. It's on.

Re: The Seasteading Institute encourages floating nations, hosts conference

Devolver — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:24:00 -0000

That is indeed the question. The idea, I believe, is that any seastead can try out any social arrangement it wants. It follows that those that fail to make a workable environment for their citizens will lose their populations to others that do.

Re: Crowdsourcing the future: Can alternate reality game Superstruct help save the world?

Devolver — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:36:48 -0000

Thanks Nicola. Fixed.

Re: Argumentation: it's not just for trolls | Mark.

Itafroma — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:27:49 -0000

Thanks, Dan. I'm not discouraged: I'm just trying to figure out if I'm typing the Konami code to the wrong version of Contra. New blogger jitters, is all.

Re: Argumentation: it's not just for trolls | Mark.

Devolver — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:15:49 -0000

It's way too early to get discouraged, my friend.

Re: At TechStars, twelve teams show that Boulder, CO, can produce some fantastic tech

Devolver — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:27:05 -0000

Good call. In fact, Occipital does not have face recognition, which I should have pointed out. It can detect other objects. Don't know how well it does with faces.

Re: Seedcamp, ‘08: In a pack of copycats, two start-ups shine

Devolver — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:19:47 -0000

Andy, I referred only to the winners I saw, not the whole group of finalists. Feel free to drop me a line if you want to talk about what you're up to.

Re: Seedcamp, ‘08: In a pack of copycats, two start-ups shine

Devolver — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:21:26 -0000

Indeed, I must work with what I have.

Re: Seedcamp, ‘08: In a pack of copycats, two start-ups shine

Devolver — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:50:17 -0000

It would be helpful if you could point out how they are innovative. For the record, I was not particularly impressed with nearly the majority of tc50.

Re: Seedcamp, ‘08: In a pack of copycats, two start-ups shine

Devolver — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:49:05 -0000

Noted. Their website is still listed as Babuki. Kyko is looking at multi-player social games. FIxed.

Re: Seedcamp, ‘08: In a pack of copycats, two start-ups shine

Devolver — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:47:52 -0000

Competition is essential for spurring innovation. I'm just not sure it makes sense to devote resources in areas where the payoff is questionable to begin with.

Re: Dopplr lands on the radar of some of the internet’s bigger names, raises cash

Devolver — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:17:57 -0000

John, you are correct. Thanks!

Re: Search engine Cuil is valued at absurdly high level of $200M, despite flop

kimbjo — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:47:05 -0000

I don't think the author of this article mentioned the Cost Per Index of Google vs. Cuil.

Even if Cuil builds an IDENTICAL service to Google pound for pound, and builds a me-to business, if they can do it for far less cost, then that's a true competitive advantage.

Re: Search engine Cuil is valued at absurdly high level of $200M, despite flop

Devolver — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 15:12:13 -0000

To be fair Cuil, their indexing technology is still probably quite valuable. $200M valuable? Yeah, no.

Re: Evernote. Why it will make it & 20 Awesome Ways to Use It.

bogart — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:18:10 -0000

You could try pairing Evernote with Scanr http://www.scanr.com/ which turns images taken with your mobile phone into pdfs. If Evernote adds OCR for pdf (I'm sure they will) this could be a great solution, although it does seem that Evernote should just OCR any text it comes across, whether in a pdf or image.

I like Evernote, but do not use it that often because of no client for Symbian S60 smart phones. They have the nice-looking iPhone client, but I think it is a mistake not to have one for the Nokia nseries, eseries, and other S60 phones. This is the type of app that people with S60 smartphones could really use!

Re: LiveStub hopes to nuke StubHub, others, with commission-free scalping

st stephen — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:30:45 -0000

Hi Dan,

from your post:

>Unlike its counterparts, it does not require users to register

Based on this, it sounds like an open invitation for unregistered users to sell unverified tickets. If you have facts contrariwise, I'd certainly be pleased to see them.

It's easy to see what the business model is Not; what would be of interest is some rationale for what the model Is ;-)

Tickets are indeed an interesting and fast-moving space, and there are indeed other sites out there moving towards providing transparency and innovating.

I think it's possible for investors to back a company without deep understanding of a market and back naive plans with the best of intentions;

I did not mean to imply that was your or the company's intent, sorry.

For further research, though, here are some of the many sites which already claim to offer no-fees tickets:

justgreattickets.com
concerttickets.org
gottickets.com
freefeeticket.com
cheappremiumtickets.com
hallmarktickets.com

I'll leave it to you to assess the validity of each claim, but each is closer to making an honest claim in that you see $0 fee at checkout. You will also find lots of commonality in the graphical designs which seem to come from a common template.

Re: LiveStub hopes to nuke StubHub, others, with commission-free scalping

Devolver — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:15:30 -0000

Stephen, I think you're overreacting. It's not clear that LiveStub is encouraging the sale of "unverified, usually counterfeit tickets to unsuspecting buyers." Morten Lund is not an idiot.

It is true that there is an affiliate relationship with TicketWebs, which I think LiveStub should make clear, but it's not the site's core long term business model. I added an update to the site when I found this out and I made it clear that the site's interface is misleading. But the whole operation is not a scam.

Re: LiveStub hopes to nuke StubHub, others, with commission-free scalping

st stephen — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:27:28 -0000

TicketsNow only licenses its SOAP API (where they get the data) to its affiliates.
They had to sign an affiliate agreement to get the API.

Even if they somehow arranged to make a 0% commission for the site, TicketsNow still charges a service fee aka commission, and this site feeds them business, so it's an affiliate relationship any way you spin it.

Further, I examined tickets for several known TicketsNow affiliates and ticketsnow.com for the identical events on this site, and found the same prices and service fees on both listings... so whatever this site is not charging is not benefiting the buyer one iota, it is still $ going to ticketsnow.

The site introduces zero new 'competition' among ticket resellers, and does not even address the issue of preventing counterfeit sales, which is normally done by requiring registration and fees to hold sellers accountable. As is, this site is an open invitation for counterfeiters to scam the public.

Again, simple fact checking (and changing the title of this post or deleting it) is appropriate here . Sorry to be so strident in tone here but really I feel you are going to mislead lots of people and potentially foster use of yet another scalper site which encourages the sale of unverified, usually counterfeit, tickets to unsuspecting buyers by unregistered sellers.

You don't want to be aiding and abetting that, do you?

Re: LiveStub hopes to nuke StubHub, others, with commission-free scalping

Devolver — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:01:42 -0000

It is more complicated. It's not an affiliate site, but it did seed its database with TicketsNow's listings. LiveStub hopes to build up its own ticket database, which will charge no commission.

Re: LiveStub hopes to nuke StubHub, others, with commission-free scalping

Sniff Test FAIL — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:42:20 -0000

The labeling is not even the most misleading part. Positioning the company as like StubHub and saying they don't charge fees but then sending users to TicketsNow, an actual StubHub competitor, which charges fees comparable to the StubHub's, is deceitful. They could have just as easily listed StubHub's tickets and favorably compared themselves to TicketsNow instead. Smoke and mirrors. Customers pay the commission to the real guys with tickets either way.

Re: LiveStub hopes to nuke StubHub, others, with commission-free scalping

Devolver — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:13:23 -0000

Peter,

I do still think the model is solid and that it offers more transparency than its competitors. I am just put off by the labels suggesting the data comes from LiveStub, when it doesn't.

Re: LiveStub hopes to nuke StubHub, others, with commission-free scalping

Devolver — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:44:28 -0000

Martin, you are right. That is too harsh. There are some reasons for it, but I think the interface is somewhat misleading, since it labels LiveStub as the source when you do a search.

Re: LiveStub hopes to nuke StubHub, others, with commission-free scalping

Martin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:35:20 -0000

what do you mean not how they presented itself?

from what i can tell they are not charging a commission on the ticketsnow inventory, but rather simply listing it. and there are lots of reasons for that. all seems above water to me.

Re: LiveStub hopes to nuke StubHub, others, with commission-free scalping

Devolver — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:07:24 -0000

It seems you are right. This is not how the company presents itself at all. See above for correction.

Re: LiveStub hopes to nuke StubHub, others, with commission-free scalping

Devolver — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:44:26 -0000

John,

I checked myself and indeed you are right. I've reached out to the company for an explanation and will update when I get one.