Slashdot Mirror
Flashing Back to the Dotcom Era: 24 Hour Dotcom
comforteagle writes "I was taken back six years in one swoop by the 24 Hour dotcom project this morning. A group of german folks at the Wizards of OS conference have launched 24 hour sit-in 'to create a dotcom business from scratch in 24 hours.' As of writing there's only three hours left until the IPO on eBay. Half serious, half art project, it looks like great fun."
An IPO on eBay? It sounds creepy and foreshadowing of things to come. As if eBay isn't central to our economy enough.
Any /.er's planning to bid?
"Sorry honey, I can't go visit your parents with you, I'm starting a business today. But I'll be finished with it by Tuesday..."
Another implication...as much as our friends in Redmond slap us in the face with the fact that businesses are all about making money and not about providing goods or services, I wonder how people would trust a business that literally sprang up overnight to be in our best interest?
412077696e6e657220697320796f7521da
This is a great use of how powerful the Internet can become. These guys are going to get a ton of traffic and have a viable site now because of slashdot. Wow. Anyway, I also tried to start a dotcom this week - GroupShares.com - and it had a very successful first week. About 50 registered users and some ad money from adsense - enough to Incorporate in FL anyway. Goes to show that if you do enough work, maybe anyone can get a dotcom off the ground.
Cool.
Aj
-------
artlu.net
The Dozomo team has manipulated the Webproxy at the WOS3-Conference so that when you query Google, you are redirected to Dozomo. The problem is that your search parameters are not passed on. So users are forced to enter their search query a second time and post the dozomo-form. Then they get to google (or whatever search engine they specified).
Bad enough, but it gets worse: When you now modify your search query on google, you are redirected back again - and again, your search query is not passed on!
Querying the web from the conference is a pain at the moment. If I had shares, I would sell them.
I have this vivid recollection of going to visit a Silicon Valley dot-com in 2000. They were bidding to provide the backend for an ecommerce project I was working on for another dot-com (see how incestuous the whole thing was?).
We talked for a while about their underlying technology. I noticed a couple of dozen people scurrying around in the open bay of the converted light industrial warehouse, so I asked the CTO what all of those people were doing. "They're in marketing and sales," he replied confidently.
"So who are your current customers?" I couldn't help but ask.
"Well, our infrastructure is still being rolled out," he answered.
"Umm.. you mean, your datacenter is still in the works?"
"Well, yes, but the application itself is still evolving."
I could tell where this was headed. "What percentage of this functionality we've been talking about is actually available right now, today?"
He at least had enough shame to avert his gaze as he admitted, "Well, we're almost there. I'd say 75% of the functionality is there right now, but by the time we finish you're project, we'll have all of the desired functionality for our product."
These guys had over $10M in funding, and had been in business for four months before we spoke with them. Their revolutionary new technology was essentially an Object Perl framework for building websites. They had no customers. They had no product. They had lots of money. All of their managers were under 30 years old.
THAT was a dot-com.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
IPO On Ebay, they better make sure they follow the Sarbanes Oxley Act
Would be horrible to do 20 years in jail for Art.