Podcast #5

This is the fifth episode of the StackOverflow podcast, wherein Joel and I discuss the following:

• Trivia clarifications from podcast #3: Leonardo DiCaprio on Growing Pains, and how the Fonz actually Jumped the Shark in Happy Days

• Thanks for all the offers to pitch in and help!

• The StackOverflow private beta should be in about 6-8 weeks.

• My depressing lack of project planning: Joel maintains I need a task list. In Fogbugz, of course.

• A discussion of the ASP.NET login provider model and NTLM, and how to enable NTLM in Firefox.

• A correlation between the prevalence of NTLM and Microsoft's model of developing software for corporations versus developing software for consumers.

• A discussion on David Heinemeier-Hansson's excellent Startup School talk: Is it pathetic that someone needs to stand up at a startup school and tell people that they need to charge for their product?

• Businesses will spend money -- consumers won't. You can't make money selling commodities to consumers as a startup; you have to sell a luxury.

• The Google model: get the eyeballs, figure out how to make money later. Is that fair to startups? Can every startup make it to the necessary scale to get that revenue model to work?

• experiments with AdSense on fakeplasticrock.com and codinghorror.com (search)

• Why Joel and I feel compelled to run ad-blocking software in our browsers. Why doesn't it block the Google search result ads? Are search result ads more task-related and thus useful?

• Jamie Zawinski on social networking websites: they should get you laid.

• I try to get Joel to use Twitter again, and he references the Penny Arcade cartoon. I still think it's useful. Follow me on Twitter!

• A (very) long -- but worthwhile -- discussion about my recent post on XML.

• Revealing Notepad's "bug".

• Apps like RescueTime which track what applications you're running over time.

• Discussion of an email from Michael Dorfman, wherein he is embarrassed on my behalf for my lack of computer science rigor.

• Joel questions the sense of humor of his readers.

• A brief bit of advice from Joel on washing your electronics, and how to fix your computers by dropping them. Hey, I didn't say it was good advice.

• Thank you for all the questions and for the Wiki edits!

There were no listener questions this week. We'd love to answer your questions on any topic!

If you'd like to submit a question to be answered in our next episode, record an audio file (90 seconds or less) and mail it to podcast@stackoverflow.com.

The transcript wiki for this episode is available for public editing.

Episode source