February 2011

The Architecture. The construction. The systems. The layout & design inside. A new office encapsulates everything that makes software development happen. Here are 15 killer offices created by companies in the business of software & tech (in no particular order).

15. Twitter San Francisco, California

Somehow they managed to make their office as 'cute' as their website.

Twitter office

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Snowpocalypse Tshirt

Loren Burton's 4-Hour Startup story has become a bit of a phenomena on HN recently. For two reasons. A) "The 4-Hour Startup" is a brilliant headline. There's a reason why the Timothy Ferris named his book, "The 4-Hour Work Week". It's a tested, proven title that catches peoples attention and they want to learn more. It sells books like crack. Loren inadvertently used a similar headline, but it was optimally tweaked for hackers and startup junkies. "The 4 Hour Startup" is probably the best marketing headline you could possibly post on Hacker News. Thousands of nerds everywhere, me included, were compelled to click that link and learn more.

The second reason why Loren's story has become so popular is that he really does have something here. It's a little business model he stumbled upon by shooting arrows in the dark - and yes, it became profitable in 4 hours.

As a courtesy to Loren, and in the spirit of open business discussion - I'd like elaborate on how he can further develop his strategy; specifically: how to scale it.

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Today I discovered Helvetireader - a no frills web based RSS solution. It's actually a custom stylesheet that sits atop Google Reader to minimize the typical Google clutter. The result is a humble, clear and concise view of all your feeds.

Here's the before and after snapshots.

Google Reader

And now, with Helvetireader:

Helvitireader

Ahh, much better.

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As the worldwide economic landscape slowly shifts away from US dollar supremacy, tech hubs outside the USA are becoming more relevant; and arguably more attractive long term destinations for new startups.

Here are three 'silicon valley alternatives' with promising potential. Included are four basic ranking factors that I believe are vital to becoming a rich startup culture: access to capital, taxation, cost of living, and civil liberties.

Singapore

Singapore
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EFF

Clicky

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